20th February, 2015
By Prince Arinze Onebunne
Inadequate regional food supplies, diminishing quality of health, and increasing environmental deterioration are the three key underlying problems affecting the future well-being of mankind. The magnitude of these problems is set to increase as the world’s population continues to grow. By 2050 it is estimated that there will be an extra 2 billion people in the world. To feed them, we will need to make farming become more efficient and sustainable. This will enable farmers produce more food while using fewer resources to safeguard the future of our food supplies.
The demand for animal products presents many development opportunities. Livestock production will become the biggest contributor to agriculture in coming decades, with consumption of animal-based foods the fastest growing sub-food category in Africa. The key challenge is determining how to intensify livestock productivity in a sustainable manner.
Nigeria has more than 5% of the grasscutters on earth. One of the major challenges is that females do not produce enough quality weaned babies, and this opens up a golden opportunity for technically based companies like us to fill this gap.
We do not only provide quality piglets, goat, snail and grasscutter breeders-we also teach farmers how to feed them with quality materials. This is because only 10-grasscutters are produced per/ female/ per year before; and because Nigerian farmers work hard-and are always willing to learn. JOVANA FARMS won her reputation by helping farmers make more money in snail, pig, goat and grasscutter production. We did it by providing our customers with good quality products, and a full set of practical, and detailed training programs. As a result, the farmers were able to produce more and heavier weaned piglets and grasscutter breeders, and many achieved 25-30 piglets/ sow/ year and 16-18 grasscutter babies/ doe/ year. This may mean little elsewhere, but it is a major step forward for an industry that only produces 18 pigs/ sow/ year. Producing good quality creep diets is not hard, but making sure they are used correctly is indeed a major challenge. Our sales team runs many hundreds of farmer meetings in the country. This can be a 2-hours training section with ten farmers in a feed store, teaching them how to make piglets, grasscutter and snail babies eat more food. This can also be a one-day seminar gathering 100 people or more talking about the world’s latest grasscutter, snail and pig production technologies. These programs have become useful events for us. As a result, through our 38 seminar venues nationwide we supply many grasscutter, snail and pig breeders to interested farmers.
I once talked to an old lady farmer in Enugu state. She said: ‘’your products and training programme help me stay profitable in this business. I have 100- grasscutters in my backyard. I treat them like my children, because they pay for my kids to go through university. They provide steady income for me. Now they are helping my grandchildren go through their education.’’
This is an opportunity for all. This is a wonderful market. Things are still happening in agriculture and the future is bright. Although new challenges appear every day. For example, the rising cost of basic raw materials like pellet, corn and soybean meal. We are not smarter than the others. We are just one of the many in the field who appreciate this wonderful opportunity. We just show up in a right time and a right place.
Our animals are always a sure bet, exceeding farmers’ expectations in terms of performance and profitability in all the farms across the country where they are being used.
The hard work, ethic and extreme dedication to quality and improvement which inspired JOVANA FARMS to begin its nationwide training programs is just what will keep it ahead of the field for many years to come.
Since we’re all concerned about food security and employment creation, I am amazed so little is known by the public about the profitability of agribusiness approaches to wealth generation and eco-system preservation. Add to the fact that everybody needs to eat meat and white-meat is one of widely used in all parts of the world so it’s nearly impossible to run out of clients or customers. And my wonder continues….
Contact us for consultancy or attend Jovana Farms seminars nearest to you and discover the essential steps on how to breed snails, grasscutters and pigs easily and avoid costly mistakes that inexperienced farmers are prone to! Can’t attend? Order for our self-tutorial VCD & BOOK. Visit us at www.jovanafarms.com, E-mail:[email protected] or Call: 080 33262 808, for more details.