Nigeria: Farming Without Soil
Farmers are growing crops without soil.
They are on a national campaign to promote this type of agriculture, DANIEL ESSIET writes.
In a room in Anifowoshe, Ikeja, Lagos, kale, romaine, lettuce, oregano, thyme, arugula and basil are grown in trays under energy bulbs.
The seeds are cultivated without soil. You are greeted by the pleasant sight of rows of young maize leaves growing out of pipes filled with water and saw dust –no soil.
Though they are growing in a protected environment, the leaves are thick, lush green, and free of dust particles, giving them a clean and healthy look.
BIC Farms Concept Chief Executive, Pastor Debo Onafowora, believes hydroponics – growing plants without soil – is the best way to go.
Hydroponics, he explained, involves growing plants without soil.
An Associate Pastor with Living Faith Church (aka Winners’ Chapel), Ota in Ogun State, Onafowora grows crops hydroponically. The most common are tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and maize. The seeds are placed in trays and watered several times daily with a nutrient solution.
Onafowora added that hydroponics is better than conventional farming.
He emphasised that a plant only need some nutrients, water, and sunlight to grow.
He listed the advanges of hydroponics as high quality products, less space, and consumes fewer resources.
He harvests his vegetables just after 25 days, half the time needed with regular planting.
Besides farming, he teaches agriculturists how to apply the technology. He helps his customers to set up farms and provides consultation and training.
A small scale vegetable hydroponic farm requires an investment of N500,000. This will give a 10 ft X 20ft greenhouse hydroponics farm with hydroponics with systems for growing 250 kilogrammes ( KG) of tomatoes or 350 kg of cucumber.
One can make net profits of 40 to N50,000 monthly. He has established over 100 farms across the country.
By growing cattle fodder off the fields, he said hydroponics could offer a solution to the frequent violent clashes between farmers and herdsmen over arable farmland that is disappearing due to desertification.
Onafowora advocated the use of hydroponic fodder as the best option for livestock feed, adding that this would help reduce the cost of the product by over 20 per cent.
He said the fodder could be grown within nine days and that it saves about 95 per cent of land.
Onafowora noted that hydroponics fodder production technology is a climate-controlled crop growing system, which guaranteed daily production of highly nutritious livestock feeds.
“It is grown from grains. We convert one kilogramme of grain to 5kg of fodder within nine days. Normally, on the soil, it will take up to 90 days.
“What you need is 100 hectares of land to grow. In terms of fodder quantity, we will do that on one hectare of land and we are doing that saving about 90 per cent of water,” he added.
He is partnering Landmark University, Omu-Aran, Kwara State.
Universities of Lagos, Ibadan, Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta, Lead City University have also picked the technology.
To boost food production, Samson Ogbole is employing aeroponics- a process of growing plants in the air.
He became involved in soilless farming in 2014. Two years later, he founded PS Nutraceuticals, a firm that applies agricultural technologies to boost food production.
The firm Nutracueuticals deploys various technologies, including hydroponics (plants in water), aquaponics (use of waste produce of fishes to feed plants) and aeroponics (plants grown in air) to grow crops all year round.
To him, aeroponics is a better alternative for growing crops indoors.
Experts say aeroponics is similar to hydroponics and that it uses water. The roots are suspended in a dark chamber and sprayed with nutrient-rich solution.
To Fresh Direct Produce and Agro-Allied Services CEO/founder Angel Adelaja, urban agriculture has brought a new hope. She uses old shipping containers for farming.
A self-taught hydroponics expert, Adelaja appears to be making headway. The entrepreneur, who has a background in biostatistics and epidemiology, learnt hydroponics online.
She created a stackable container farm in Abuja, which is essentially an aggregation of vertical farming and hydroponics.
She is campaigning for the transformation of old shipping containers into miniature hydroponic farms.
The containers are retrofitted with growing platforms where beds of lettuce are grown with their roots in water.
Adelaja and her team grow those vegetables using only nutrient, water and LED light.
The method makes it possible to grow crops all year round.
Adelaja encourages farmers to use abandoned shipping containers in their farms.
Her company, Fresh Direct, has several divisions one of which produces stackable containers.
She is passionate about creating awareness among other farmers.