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The Executive Director, Commercial of Agro Park Development Company Limited, Mr. Seun Edun has called on Nigerians to embrace commercial agricultural practices in order to position the country as a serious agricultural nation.
Edun in an interview told journalists in Lagos that Nigerians are largely practicing subsistence farming through which it cannot benefit maximally from the vast arable land the nation is blessed with.
Agro Park Development Company Limited is an agricultural asset management Company assisting Nigerians at home and in the diapora to invest in the agriculture sector of the economy.
“We create agricultural commodities investment portfolios by offering for sale farmland on our farm estates to the open market, we offer world class farm management services to all our farmland owners by cultivating their farmlands, secure farm produce off-take agreements with food producing companies like Tiger Foods and guaranteeing their returns on investments. Edun explained.
On the motivation behind the business, Edun continued that, the company has to assist the country by providing intervention to salvage the vast arable land wasting away in Nigeria.
“According to a United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation report, almost 38 million hectares of farmland are wasting away in Nigeria. We found out that the leading food manufacturing companies in Nigeria basically import the farm produce required as inputs in their production processes.
“In a bid to correct this anomaly, we set-up our Farm Estate model to cultivate farm produce specifically as inputs for food producing companies starting with the cultivation of local spices and herbs as import substituted inputs to Food producing companies manufacturing Food condiments and seasonings.
According to him the vision of the intervention is to “Revolutionize Agricultural Practices and our mission is to lead a new era of agriculture Investments, our key philosophy in driving these is precedent on our belief to optimize the performances of farmland investments that are best identified and managed through the integration of agricultural and financial expertise and best practices to yield competitive returns for our individual and institutional investors.”
Edun however categorised the achievements of the organisation into two. “Our achievement so far can be categorised in two folds 1) In less than a year we have cultivated various spices and herbs on about 200hectares of farmland portfolios for our subscribers at quite attractive returns and we are expanding rapidly, we aim to have under our management over 1,000hectares of spices and herbs farmland portfolios on our Farm estate and over 5,000hectares of support farms/out-growers by the end of 2018. 2) With our ever increasing harvest yields of these local spices & herbs, we have helped give our produce off-takers a lot of foreign exchange savings from their previously imported substitutes needed for manufacturing food condiments & seasonings.”
On big players in food processing industry relocating from Nigeria due to obvious reasons, Edun said his company is positioning to change the ugly narrative.
“The critical constraints to the food processing industry in Nigeria is the availability and aggregation of the farm produce they require as feedstock or inputs in their production processes, APDC is leading the change to this scenario by promoting Farming clusters through our Farm Estate model and also our Out-grower scheme to aid easy aggregation of the desired quantities and qualities of farm produce required by the food processing industry;
“We also aim to solve other attendant infrastructure constraints to the food processing industry by developing our Food Industrial Park (FIP) with world class infrastructure for agricultural value chain business activities these will help promote and create many SMEs in the food processing industry,” he explained.
Proffering solution to the problems in the agricultural sector in Nigeria, Edun who confessed that the sector has been in comatose since due to lack of evolvement, said, “The agricultural sector has been seemingly comatose in Nigeria largely due to stagnation and lack of evolvement in the sector. If you look at other sectors or Industries like Communications, fashion, Entertainment etc they have all largely evolved and hence developed over time. But in the Agriculture sector, it has been stagnant in terms of practices, tools and methods, we are still largely a subsistence and small scale farming industry, we have only a handful of proper commercial farming businesses. This can only change by attracting new forms of Investments into the sector which will lead to adaptation of technology and advanced farming methods to yield enhanced productivity and output. This is the change that we at Agro Park have set-out to lead in the Agricultural Sector.”
Explaining the products and services of Agro Park, Edun said, “We offer an easy and reliable process to channel Investments into Agriculture by offering Cleared and prepared farmland and world class farm management services which includes guarantees on harvest yields and an already determined produce off-take market thus guaranteeing our Investors returns on their capital on the one hand; We also ensure continuous aggregation of supplies of the required farm produce input required by the Food processing companies in contract with us especially Food processing companies into the manufacture of Food condiments and seasonings; Spices & herbs produce from our farm estate include Chili Pepper, Local Basil, Lemon Grass, Thyme, Fennel, Turmeric, Ginger, Coriander and also Vegetable like Ugwu in commercial quantities suitable to these Food processing companies on the other hand. The uniqueness of our offerings is in the world class standards that govern our business process; we act as a fiduciary to our farmland owners/investors and our relationships are bound by standard agreements and also with standard contract farming agreements with our off-takers.”
Explaining further, he said, “Our model is truly the first of its kind in Nigeria and we have been able to not only cope but soar beyond expectations as a result of the wealth of experiences and professionalism of the core of our staff and management, they are truly our greatest assets and our commitment to our core-values of dependability, Integrity, reliability, excellence, creativity and tenacity guides our day to day business operations.
“Our contributions include; Firstly, Job creation because for every hectare of farmland purchased with us 5 new jobs are created and this also helps raise the needed capital investments into farming.
“Secondly, rural development and I can say this because we create a strong economy for the local communities that our farm estates are located, we are also empowering rural women by training them in post-harvest primary and secondary post-harvest processing activities,” he said.
