Seizing opportunity in calabash farming

Lately, calabash farmers in Dukku area of Gombe State and its environs are making a fortune out of the business. Many of the farmers have been into this type of farming for a number of years. Malam Kawu Adamu Nakaya is a farmer in Nakaya, Bozonshulwa ward of Dukku area of Gombe State, who, on […]

Lately, calabash farmers in Dukku area of Gombe State and its environs are making a fortune out of the business.
Many of the farmers have been into this type of farming for a number of years. Malam Kawu Adamu Nakaya is a farmer in Nakaya, Bozonshulwa ward of Dukku area of Gombe State, who, on weekly basis, transports his calabashes to the Dukku market on market day-Wednesdays. He says that calabash farming is now seen as the most profitable type of farming when compared to the other types of farming.
Nakaya said: “I have been into this farming for almost 20 years now and I started with only two hectares of land in my hometown, Nakaya, and now I have about five hectares. But we, rural farmers, are faced with many challenges – fertilisers, accessible roads for transporting our products to markets to make good sales, insecticides e.t.c.  And mechanisation, too, is a huge problem. As a rural farmer with four hectares of land, I need machines to ease the drudgery but I cannot afford them. The government needs to provide these machines.”
Yet, with all the challenges faced by the farmers, Nakaya is very contented with the profits he is making out of it.
“On a land of two hectares in a year, a farmer of calabash can earn about N500, 000 but this is not the case with beans or some cereals.”
On where the seeds of calabash can be sourced, Nakaya said the seeds can be sourced in the market with different types of calabash seeds sold. He said there are three types of the seeds, depending on the type of soil and the farmer’s choice. There are seeds for huge calabash, medium size and seeds for small-sized calabash.
To boost this type of farming, Nakaya called on the government to provide inputs that will raise their productivity.
Written by Rilwan Muhammad, a student of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, ATBU, Bauchi