Chiromawa: An integrated farm in diversity

Several farms under the Kadawa irrigation area that are mainly in Kura, Garun Malam and Bunkure local government areas are more than 95 percent into the production of known crops and vegetables, through the traditional and mechanised systems of farming.But Chiromawa farms that lay on a large farmland at Chiromawa in Garun Malam Local Government […]

Several farms under the Kadawa irrigation area that are mainly in Kura, Garun Malam and Bunkure local government areas are more than 95 percent into the production of known crops and vegetables, through the traditional and mechanised systems of farming.
But Chiromawa farms that lay on a large farmland at Chiromawa in Garun Malam Local Government Area, is one of the very unique farms in the entire irrigation area that in addition to its being an integrated farm, it also bears plants that alien to northern Nigeria.
The owner of the farm, Alhaji Muktar Chiromawa, who is also a member of the House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture, said he decided to adopt integrated system of farming because it is not only more productive, but also more profitable and easy to manage.
Conducting this reporter round the farm, Chiromawa said: “You can see that I have 25 fish ponds and each contains over a thousand fishes. I have catfish also known as clarias, Heteo Clarias (Mari) growing up to 30 kilogrammes, this other pond contain tilapia (Karfasa) that are all male.
“You can see that we have over a thousand plantain and banana plantation around the fish ponds that we irrigate with the water from the fish ponds. Then we are always cutting the dead plantation stems and decompose them to produce maggots that we use to feed the fish.
“As a way of diversified farming, we have 300 oil palm trees that ordinarily do not grow in this part of the country. What happen is, we went to the Nigeria Oil Palm Research Institute (NIFOR) office in Dutse, Jigawa State, and collected one seedling of oil palm. We treated the land and planted it. When it successfully grew and started bearing fruits, we cut it off and bought 300 seedlings that we have now planted and they are growing very well.
“Our experiment is not just on oil pam. You can see that we have pastel apple plantation that the Hausa call Fasa Dabur. It is a very expensive fruit that is being imported from different countries of the world. After carrying out several soil tests and treatment, we now have pastel apple plantations here that have started bearing fruits. We also have date palm that bears fruits within its first 3 years, instead of the usual over 40 years it takes date palm to bear fruits.
“We grow spices like thyme, black pepper (Kanin fari), coffee, Jumble mango that produces in both rainy and dry season in  addition to the groundnuts, okra and tomatoes that we are all used to. The diversification to those unusual crops is aimed at selling the idea to our local farmers to imbibe the idea.”
At the birds and animals section of the farm, Chiromawa has several species of pidgins, guinea fowl, ostriches, ducks, rabbits, geese and goats imported from different countries.
Chiromawa said: “I have two varieties of goats. The Sudanese goats specialise in providing a lot of milk. These other goats are from Niger Republic and they have meat that is better and sweeter than those of our local goats. These geese are from China while the guinea fowl lay eggs throughout the year because they have access to green grass even in the dry season.”