Niyya Farm: Farming at the edge of technology

One of the commercial farms revolutionising farming systems in the country, is Niyya Integrated Farm. The farm, sitting on 3,000 hectares of land at kilometer-60, along Kaduna-Abuja Expressway, is changing the landscape of farming in Nigeria, using state-of-the-art technology. Niyya-Farm Group (including Niyya Foods) produces range of juice and dairy products with the market brand […]

One of the commercial farms revolutionising farming systems in the country, is Niyya Integrated Farm.
The farm, sitting on 3,000 hectares of land at kilometer-60, along Kaduna-Abuja Expressway, is changing the landscape of farming in Nigeria, using state-of-the-art technology.
Niyya-Farm Group (including Niyya Foods) produces range of juice and dairy products with the market brand name ‘Farm Pride.’
Rajiv K. Joshi, the farm’s chief executive officer (CEO), said that the farm has 200 permanent staff, about 100 casual workers and seven expatriates.
The farm’s orchard
To meet the farm’s fruits demand for its juices, Niyya currently has 32 hectares of mango, guava, orange and grape orchard.
The farm is currently expanding its orchard to cover 1,500 hectares by the end of 2016. It has several thousands of seedlings to meet the farm’s expansion demand and sell to other interested farmers.
The general farm manager, Michael Kajeu, and farm manager, Sam Musa, said there are 69,000 mango seedlings of different varieties in the farm.
Niyya varieties of oranges are for two seasons, billed for expansion to about 200 hectares by the end of this year.
For grape, the farm has so far planted two hectares of the fruit plant. It also has planted seven hectares of passion fruits said to be rich in vitamins and not so common in Nigeria. The lives of these plants are sustained by a network of drip irrigation system from the farm’s mini dam, which supplies an average of four litres of water to each plant in the orchard daily.
The Niyya vegetable (cucumbers, green beans, water melon) farms are also fed from the dam with an average of two litres of water, per day, through drip irrigation system.
The processing factory
The processing plant consists of two plants-dairy and nectar plants. The former handles all dairy products which include fresh pasteurised milk and yoghurt while the later produces juices from fresh fruits which include guava, mango, orange, pineapple, passion juice and grape.
According to the production manager, Imagwe E. Godwin, there has been a lot of value addition done in the farm within the last one year. The idea is to make the factory self-sufficient, he said.
The processing plants have been automated-from the process of crushing fruits to processing of juices and yogurts.
The farm’s juices automated machines can process about 7 million litres of puree annually, giving an average of 15,000 to 20,000 litres, per day, and 3,000 litres per hour.
The system can produce 8,000 bottles of finished product per hour.
Bottles for packaging are produced in the farm, designed with what they called best materials sourced locally.
Their bottle making machines produces an average of 6,000 bottles, per hour, in its fully automated machines.
At the dairy unit, the automated equipment can process an average of 5 million litres, per annum, doing at least 3,000 litres per day. The section has cold room storage facility for its dairy products. Niyya Farm has two laboratories-microbiology and analytical.
Plan to go into poultry production
According to CEO Rajiv K. Joshi, the poultry infrastructure such as battery cages is ready, feed mill is in place, and the hatchery is also completed.
The plan is to stock 50,000 birds Joshi said: “I am focusing on the orchard expansion and stabilising the market. From now to April, we are embarking on lots of road shows jingles, radio adverts and truck branding. We need space in the market at the moment. Unless people taste these products, they will not know that this is pure juice.”
Dairy farm
In 2014, the farm suffered severe loss-many cows were stolen by cattle rustlers. Although they have beefed up security at the farm, it is apparently clear that breeding cows is not a priority for now. Joshi said that “when we stabilised, we can bring more cows and start having our cattle farms.”