‘How we restrategised for profit’

Agriculture is a viable business if effectively managed. The sector in Nigeria was worse hit during the lockdown . The sector’s players have had to develop ways to ensure stability and remain afloat against the odds. The Chief Executive Officer,  Truvis Agro Services Limited, Debo Abodunrin, is one of them. In this interview with EVELYN OSAGIE, he shared his experience during the lockdown and how they are restrategising for profit in COVID-19 agric era.

 

Challenges of running a farm in Nigeria

As with any other business in Nigeria, farming comes with its challenges.But sometimesthe challenges are not as clear cut as other businesses. In farming, asides the usual issues around infrastructure, finance and regulatory bottlenecks, you are also saddled with climatic issues, quality and standard issues around input, value chain enhancement issues, traceability and issues around market forces and price control.

The many years of abandonment of the agriculture as a business in Nigeria have required a lot of work to be done by the new entrants to catch up with the rest of the world. Lack of set standards, for example, has been a major deterrent to the country reaching its potentials in the lucrative export market. Quality of inputs and failure of extension services has impacted on yield per hectare adversely. While lack of standard measurements has impacted price regimes in many sub sectors of the industry, the current land use act has not allowed the country unlock the unquantifiable potentials of farmlands and access to finance continues to be a major challenge because of the act.

Lack of investments in processing plants that can be built around farm clusters that will reduce the massive post-harvest losses the country suffers is another big challenge. The scenario right now is that goods are exported at ridiculous prices to re-exporting countries, such as Turkey, Holland, Singapore and even China where they are reprocessed and re-exported to Europe and America and other export destinations as the countries loses trillions of Naira in the process.

Restrategising for profit in post-COVID agric sector

COVID-19 is an unprecedented occurrence. Like every other business, it hit the agricultural sector by surprise and initially no one really knew what to do. The sector in Nigeria was worse hit during the lockdown. We had crops in the field on our farms across several states: in some locations farm hands could not get to work. We did not want to put our farmers’ lives at risk.

Once the initial panic and shocks calmed a little and once we realised that our business continuity was essential to life post-COVID-19, we began to strategise on how to ensure continuity. I must at this point express our gratitude to the Federal Government that immediately designated agriculture and the food sector generally as essential services because this immediately granted us free movement across the country. The moment this designation occurred, we immediately began to restructure our operations. In the first place, we invested making farmsteads available for our workers to reduce their movement and hence undue exposure to the pandemic. Secondly, we invested in extending our storage facilities as we realised that finished products may not move as fast as it usually does and finally. We adopted new health and safety measures as well as COVID-19 protocols on our farms. The above measures helped to stabilise our operations and we are grateful to God that none of our team was infected and our operations went on smoothly throughout the period. The biggest effect of the lockdown on our business was mainly the general economic slowdown which reduced demand for our products and some bottle necks we faced in managing the logistics of finished products.

Voyage into commercial farming from Oil and Gas

I actually started my career in Oil and Gas before moving on to the financial advisory sector as a consultant, which exposed me to a lot of other sectors while doing research and advising clients. From there, I went on to the telecoms sector and co-founded the telecoms consultancy service and it metamorphosed into the first family centric Mobile Virtual Network Operator, with its NOC operating from Oxford England. While working in financial advisory, my interest in agriculture was rekindled. I saw a lot of investments going into the sector but very few if any were turning profits. Most of those who remained in the sector saw it as a hobby to retire into and not as a business. But all of the research and analysis we carried out proved that agriculture is a viable business if effectively managed. That led us into establishing the Truvis Agro Services Limited (TRUVAGRO), created as a solution to the disconnect between farm produce and industrial input. The nexus between the two is what creates an agribusiness. We have developed a home-grown Input-Output-Process-Offtake (IOPOTM) model that ensures farm produce gain easy access to industrial markets, thereby deepening the value chain and enhancing sustainability for large and small-scale farmers.

Using technology to peddle our trade

Technology has become a critical factor of our success at Truvis Agro Services Limited. It is what has given us an edge and helping us manage the pandemic era. Before now, we had invested massively in irrigation which enables us to farm all year round, but more importantly we adopted UAV (Drones) assisted “Precision Farming”. This has been the most significant game changer in terms of our bottom line. By using drones to monitor our farms, we were able to improve crop yield by almost 40 percent, save time and reduce overall costs by 30 percent. The drone technology not only allows us assess soil quality; it also helps us in mapping large farm estates, and we are constantly able to identify the topography of the land even before cultivation. One of the most outstanding outcomes of the technology is our ability to successfully grow crops like fennel and sesame in the Southwest for the first-time history.