Unemployed graduates find succour in greenhouse farming

A 25-year-old graduate, Ismail Abdullahi Aliyu, has told Daily Trust how he and his friends came up with the idea to set up a greenhouse hybrid tomato farm at Kuchiko in Bwari Area Council of the FCT. He said the idea began after his National Youth Service and securing a job was not forthcoming. “My […]

A 25-year-old graduate, Ismail Abdullahi Aliyu, has told Daily Trust how he and his friends came up with the idea to set up a greenhouse hybrid tomato farm at Kuchiko in Bwari Area Council of the FCT.
He said the idea began after his National Youth Service and securing a job was not forthcoming.
“My friend, Ismail Hassan Gidado, presented the idea to me in February and we decided to start in April. Initially four of us mooted the idea – two withdrew just before we started but two others joined us.
“After series of meetings, we resolved to have equity funding with each of us contributing N400,000. Fortunately for us, we have land to use and so before we started, we consulted a greenhouse expert that had been into the business for years.
“We also applied for a grant of N7 million from the Katsina State government which we later changed to a 5-year repayable interest free loan but it is yet to be approved,’’ he said.
Aliyu said the seedlings were bought from a company, Greenhouse Techniques in Kaduna, but due to limitation in funding, they could not pay them to set up the green house for them.
He added that they opted for local resources such as bamboo sticks and patronised local carpenters to set up the greenhouse.
“We have so far planted about 1700 hybrid tomato plants. We are yet to plant bell peppers. They start fruiting after about three months and keep on fruiting for up to eight months under constant watering and fertiliser application.
“We did weekly application of NPK 20-10-10 before flowering and NPK 15-15-15 after flowering.
“Unfortunately, cutting cost was not without challenges; edges of the roofing were not properly done and so water accumulates, creating a heavy weight on the bamboo sticks making them to eventually collapse. 
 “Also, because we did not trim the offshoots, there was no adequate air circulation and so too much moisture and humidity build up resulted in the leaf disease,’’ he said.
To remedy this, he said they have ordered for a drip line from China via Alibaba and have purchased a recommended fungicide to control the disease.
“Marketing is a major challenge because we started producing at a time of tomato glut and so the prices were not encouraging but Alhamdulillah we were able to get two stores that would buy at a reasonable price of between N350 and N500 per kg,” Aliyu said.