Many young Nigerians do not find agriculture attractive owing to the drudgery involved in farming activities.
The situation is making them abandon rural communities – where farming is one of the few sources of jobs.
But Kayode Afolabi is among the few young successful farmers changing the narrative. He is the co-founder of Wheck Farms, an agri-tech startup that is based in Niger State. He and his friends are redefining the agribusiness space.
Kayode and his co-founders were inspired to go into agriculture owing to their desire to reduce Nigeria’s food import bill.
According to him, it is ridiculous that the country still spends billions of naira yearly on the importation of food crops despite having large expanse of arable land for cultivation.
The engineer-turned-entrepreneur says his initial start-up capital was $2,000, an amount he and his co-founders jointly put together.
He says the money came from their savings and that the business model enabled them to raise additional funds to kick-start.
Since starting, Wheck Farms
has grown steadily despite the fundamental challenges limiting crop productivity in the country.
The business currently has four full-time and 120 temporary employees.
Kayode says that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected his business as it disrupted operations.
“Our business model is designed to provide an opportunity for interested investors to finance the farming of the crops we farm for a percentage return on the investment,” he says.
“However, due to the general economic situation, which was quite negative as a result of the pandemic, there was investor apathy which affected cash inflow,” he explains.
“Secondly, the extended lockdown did not enable us to initiate the farming cycle as we had scheduled and this affected our farming operations,” Kayode adds.
He says his business has mechaniSed most of its farming operations as a strategy to survive the pandemic.
“All-year food production is a strategy we are embarking on as this allows us to produce crops when they are considered out of season,” the young entrepreneur says.
“Also, we will be launching our marketplace which is a platform that supports bulk buying and selling of farm produce,” he adds.
In evaluating the country’s agricultural industry, he says the country still has one of the lowest yields per hectare on the continent despite government’s consistent support to the sector.
He notes the country can only feed itself when farmers’ yield per hectare is at par with global averages while calling on the government to increase investment in research and promote technology use in farming.
“More than just farming, we need to employ the science, that is, application of the research from the various agriculture research institutes,” he says.
“Irrigation has to be aggressively implemented; we cannot afford to still depend on rainfed agriculture,” he advises.
Speaking on challenges confronting his business, he says insecurity remains a major issue limiting productivity.
Also, he sees unavailability of relevant data for the sector and the high cost of inputs as other major challenges.
He urges the government to address issues of kidnapping and banditry to ensure safety and food security, saying the high rate of insecurity has greatly affected food production.
He also calls for the support of farmers especially in the area of mechanisation.
On his advice to other entrepreneurs, he says, “Continue to be persistent and focus on value creation, once your business is an effective and economic solution to a problem, success will follow.”
