A lot of people love to farm, some people are considering farming as a retirement option. On several occasions, we have discussed whether it’s good to buy or lease land for farming purposes. Each has its own advantage and disadvantage which intending farm owners need to put into great consideration before deciding on the best choice. Let’s discuss some of the factors that one need to put into consideration before buying that farmland:
1. Nearness and road network
The farm you are setting up is a business center or we could call it the office. We go to our office every day to perform some activities. The same thing applied to the farm as a business center. Several activities take place on the farm every day.
It’s therefore important that your farm is close by with a good road network so you can visit at any time of the day. I actually advise people not to have farms that they can’t rush to in anger. Imagine there is an emergency or you just want to pay them some surprise visit.
Your farm should be somewhere that you can readily visit at any time for better supervision. A good road network to the farm is an additional advantage for you to easily get to sell your farm produce. Buyers most often visit farms that have good networks.
2. Access to water
Rain fails is no more a great source for crop production like in the olden days. Climate change happens and it’s still happening. No one, not even the meteorological people that study the rain pattern can actually predict when the rain will fall or not. Neither can they accurately predict the quantity of rainfall that we are expecting? Climate change has affected everything. Ensure you take time to read more on climate change’s effect on agriculture so you understand how to manage your farm.
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Before committing funds to that land space, ensure there is a possible source of water or you are planning to create a water source on your farm. Make sure the land you want to buy has an external source of water outside the rainfall. Having access to water ensure you can plant all year round hence can tap from every of the market peak and sometimes glut price.
Having water gives you an edge over the farmers that for not have water hence can only plant for a few months in the year.
Farm produce has been known to command better prices at those times when the products are not much in the market. Those scarcity times happen because only a few farmers that have water can cultivate crops.
3. Farmworkers and staff
No matter the amount of money you can have to run a farm, you will be humbled if you don’t have farm laborers and farmworkers to run the system for you.
Farm management plus farm activities are carried out by farmworkers and staff. These days farmworkers are extremely scarce because none want to do the tedious farm work again. And we will sincerely not blame them. The world has gone beyond the manual tilling of land that we will practice in Africa.
The majority of the back-breaking work has been replaced by machinery. When considering owning farmland that you want to keep active, I will suggest that you look out for areas that still have access to farmworkers. The northern part of Nigeria has access to plenty and affordable farm workers that will readily assist you on the farm. Though it comes with its own attendance problem of insecurity.
The southern part which is peaceful has no access to farm labor. Most of us who are close to the border depends on the foreign workers that come through the borders on annual basis. The Lagos border side also has access to yearly farm laborer that comes in through that side.
4. Farm thieves
On several occasions, farmers get to the farm to discover his/her crop(s) has been harvested overnight. This act is carried out by specific community members who have been following your activities.
In most cases, the community will never disclose to you that they have people that steal farm produce in their community. Sure they know that but they are only interested in selling the land to you. You get to discover that after you have committed funds and resources. You have to do a thorough investigation before committing funds to the farm.
Any farming community you visit and there are no nonindigenes cultivating crops in that area should give you a red signal. I’m not saying all communities are like that but you should be concerned why they have nonindigenes buy land or borrow land from them. Some might have come and run away.
