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Why I put aside my degree for farming in a rural area…
During my school years I actually try to meet up with the demand of the society – you need a first class second class upper. When I decided to go into agribusiness, I put all application behind me and I kept my certificates in a box. While working with an organization, I discovered that I don’t like sitting down working on the computer. It feels like i didn’t do anything for the whole day. I decided to resign and farming came to mind.
My name is Bose Ruth Suberu. Born in Oguri, Kogi states in 1980. My mum moved to Lagos to meet my dad. One thing led to the other I went back to the village with my grandma. After secondary education, I joined my parents in Lagos, got admission into Lagos State University in 2002 where I studied history and international studies. I was also working on part-time and at a time my employer had to write a letter that if I wanted to study, I have to resign or leave my studies and face the work. I resigned and it was so difficult for me to pay my fees and buy materials for studies.
A particular friend was so good to me that she financed my tuition fee for two years and before I got another job. After that, I managed till graduation. I took up a job with a construction firm but I also realized sitting down and working on the computer wasn’t my thing. When I went home then and someone greets me how was your day, it feels like I didn’t do anything for the whole day. I thought to myself if I don’t want to work for anybody anymore what will I be doing that even if it fails, I’ll still be willing to try again.
My passion for plants and animals farming came to mind in 2015. A friend helped me to get a land where I started with cassava, maize and there was no much rain then. One question, I asked myself was that I’ll be harvesting maize in march that year and harvesting cassava a year after, so between that three months of harvesting maize and cassava what will I be doing? That lead me to a training on vegetable farming I saw online which I went for. Since then I’ve been doing it even when I failed, I tried making researches and I was getting it right.
Presently, pepper, tomato, cucumber, okra, maize are my major crops. I remember my grandma’s cousin was a farmer, during weekend I’d follow her to farm. Also, some of our family members were skillful farmers. On Saturdays, I’d go with them to the farm – I derived my passion for farming from most of my family members.
Now that I’m into farming, they think I’m suffering being in the bush. Since I’ve left Lagos to live somewhere in the bush, they’ve been wondering how am coping and they want me back in the city. Farming is what I’ve chosen this is what I am and I’m enjoying.
Farming has been fun so far because it’s my passion and I love what I’m doing. I have seven workers, they’re like my family because that’s the only way one can have a good working relationship with one’s workers. Let them give their opinion and together you make something good from what you are doing.
In my pepper farm, I have even children coming around during holidays to help out. I’ve also been running an organization, farm advocacy and rural development center focus on unemployment and rural developments. This is to train the unemployed on how to be a successful farmer to end hunger, poverty and to also take care of their immediate needs.
Prisoners are also be trained on how to produce their own food and the other aspect of it which is the rural development is taking care of the sanitation, water, medical climate and the children need in the society. If it wasn’t farming, I wouldn’t have done any other thing. Agriculture is what I love. My farming has been a bit easy different from what our forefathers has been doing because I’ve been using some of the modern system of farming.
I have drip irrigation system. Though I run water from the river but I’m doing it in a very different way. I started with manual irrigation and I’m still doing part of it because i didn’t have enough fund to install drip irrigation system for my pepper farm which is my largest farm. I’m hoping that with time I will have enough fund to raise more money to install drip irrigation system.
On a yearly basis I’m growing though it’s difficult with the cost of inputs we have almost 100% increase of inputs and every day our lives have been determined by dollars and the insecurity challenges also is something that discouraged one from farming but even at that I’m not giving up. We’ll rugged these countries together and this is what I’m going to do and I’m hoping for a better Nigeria.
