Upholding The Core Values Of Agriculture : My Experience.

When the thought of being a farmer first came to my mind, I had to deeply research it, not that alone, I sought for help, tutors, read both night and day, though the passion is there, I know I have to prepare myself for the long journey.

As times goes on I began to have interest in vegetables farming, a single occurrence changed my mindset till date, we bought this so called Amaranthus Spinach from the market, after preparations and eating, the whole family entered into a stooling and purging spree, it was so scary, my mum told us it's because the vegetables were boosted heavily with fertilizer, known as NPK.

So I made decided to search out if such thing could be planted just naturally, I from there got to know of a farmer in the upper southwest region of the country, Òyó state, she's a farmer who trains youths on how to farm organically, without chemical, she also construct locally made greenhouses with bamboo. Her name is Yinka Adesola. She taught us in the space of three month internship, we learnt how to plant and take care of exotic vegetables, we constructed a lot greenhouse made of bamboo. This greenhouse can stay for years if we'll taken care of.

[From group whatsapp Page]

From this woman I got to sharpen my passion and derive my core values : Providing A Healthy Food For A Healthy Living. I got to know that if a farmer is producing a food full of hazard chemicals which are residue from heavy use of pesticides and herbicides, he's not only providing the food but providing a slow death to the populace.

I got back home and went straight to practising what I learnt, the harvest was great with my first harvest of cucumbers, from there I bought myself a water pump and a tank, I could remember taking N150,000 / $430 to the market to buy farm implement to step up my farm that day. Farming pays and providing good food makes me happy.

I've joined so many Innitiave and NGOs to learn more over the years, I can't do without attending symposium, conferences, training and seminars on sustainable agriculture.

[At a Greenhouse Tomato 🍅 Farm Training]

Fast forward to the present day now, I've failed on so many occasion and am still learning my core values have brought me before kings and queens in almost all sector, am the secretary of many farm associations, am always among the first to do so many things , sack farming, organic Cucumber, organic fertilizers and many more. I've been in teams that has produced some brilliant ideas.

In one of our brainstorming sessions on combating army worms, I had a talk with a fellow PhD student in Agriculture, he told me there is possibility of using Bitter leaf as a remedy, with immediate effect I got it, squeeze the water out and apply on our maize 🌽 farm infected with army worm.

[That was me holding the broom , applying it in the crude way 😁 😁 ]

Every morning is always for farm inspection, we were surprised to see that there was no traces of armyworm in the maize again. I couldn't believe my eyes, the menace of army worm ravaged this country last year, I can't believe it that the cure lies right under our nose. I quickly made it known to all my farmer friend and they adopted it too and gave positive result.

It was while interacting with other farmers I got to know the numerous uses of Bitter leaf, the livestock farmer used it a lot either to wean babies off the mother, treat so many diseases in rabbitry 🐰, use in organic rearing of poultry birds and many more.

Don't forget how we got this far, upholding the core values of Agriculture, why am stressing this is because assuming we have decided to use a synthetic herbicide for the army worm we wouldn't have found out this. Sticking to an healthy production of good food has brought me so deep down into researching into the chemical component of leaves.

I've once used sunflower 🌻 as a source of nutrients for my farm, I learnt it supplies Nitrogen,I've used Gliricidia Sepium too, it's my best when it comes to soil stability, whenever a new farm is open I always encourage farmers to apply it in large numbers.

[Source : Phone Gallery]

Maintaining the core values of Agriculture is very important, in producing food for our community we must not be blinded by greed. Healthyliving must be put into consideration.

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