Hello Hive

I'm so happy to witness the last day in the year 2024. And I believe that as many people here are also hoping to witness the beginning of a new year in hope and positive expectations. Starting a new year is always a remarkable moment, as many of us use this as an opportunity to start all over again. It is either we find new energy to continue pursuing existing goals or we set newer goals for ourselves. In all of these, I pray that the year will be a favorable one for all of us.

Today I made a quick recap and compilation of my farming activities for last year. This is meant to be a very long post, but I'm keeping it as short as possible.

Records like this help us to see our progress gains and losses at a glance. Keeping in mind that barely months away from now, a new farming season will be here again.
I will most likely make this a two-part blog, as this will be a documentation of my progress in the commercial farm, while the other will be about the other subsistence farming in my family farm.

We started the farming journey fully in the month of May, hiring laborers to do the clearing of the land at a cost of 10k per acre. While the leasing of the land stood at a cost of 20k per acre.

That was done, and the cost of farming, for instance, 4 acres, stood at 120k naira.

Then the tractors that assisted in cultivating the land insisted on getting 45k naira per acre. But after a series of negotiations, he agreed to accept 35k, making it a total of 140k to cultivate 4 acres.

Next were the seeds we had bought at 1400 per kg, of which we have used about 3-5 kg for an acre. And have maximized double that amount to plant at least 4 acres of land. Everything stood at 6400 for seeds and for planting on an acre, making it a total of 25600 naira for the 4 acres of land.

Then unto weeding, which costs about 14k naira to weed an acre of land, which amounts to 56k naira for the first weeding and another second round of weeding for slightly a higher amount.

Having planted corn, we equally planted soybeans to maximize cost, and the cost of planting soybeans was roughly the same amount as the cost of planting maize. Standing at 25,000 naira.

Fertilizer application was done in two batches, adding urea first and the NPK. Two bags of urea were utilized at 36500k each, making it a total of 73000k for the urea used.
And NPK was later added at a price of 43000k per bag.

And these seemed to be the majority of the expenses used in growing both the corn and the soybeans. A total amount of 539,200k naira. Aside from the cost of transportation to the farm.
Each time we visited the farm, the amount of fuel needed to fill the car ranged from 15-20k naira. Nothing less than 200,000k must have been used for such, keeping our estimated spending to stand at about 800,000k maximum.

At harvest we got about 7 bags of 100 kg weight of corn, which the selling price stands at 50k per bag. If sold at the price, we would be making some 350,000, which isn't even close to half of the money spent on the farm. Hence, we did a little extra spending on storing the maize and hoping that the price will go higher, just like Bitcoin, and by then we can sell. I am predicting a price range of about 80k per bag before we sell. At that price we would be getting some amounts close to 560,000, which is a fair amount.

For the soybeans we were unable to harvest anything. The idea of mixed cropping was so as to minimize losses and maximize profit since this is a commercial farm, and the aim is to make a profit. But several challenges came up to constitute the present loss. We have learned a substantial amount of lessons along the way.

And then again we incurred some other expenses to purchase cassava stems and plant on the farm, which we are hoping will produce some quality harvest for sale as well.
Since this crop also stood on the same land where we have earlier incurred the weeding and cultivation expenses. Mixed farming reduces cost implications as the same land cultivated is used to grow different crops.

Most of our losses came from hiring laborers to do manual weeding. Manual weeding is very expensive. Spending about 14k to weed an acre when we could have utilized inorganic fertilizer at a much lesser cost. The cost of labor is expensive, and we could have done most of the work without hiring labor. And then again, the weather conditions that led to very poor yield and total loss of soybean crops were yet another factor.

Since these challenges have been recognized, better preparations can be made next time as we reinvest the proceeds from this year's farming into another farming session next year.

It has been a wonderful and amazing journey of investments in agriculture. Even if it started in losses, there is room for growth and expansion in the coming years.