Banana Farming in Nigeria

Banana farming is the most neglected farming in Nigeria. Yet, holds more promises and profit potential than most other farming. Knowledge is power and useful, but when it is kept away from the others it becomes useless! In this post we want to take a look at plantain and banana farming in Nigeria and how to get started.

You can be making N1million monthly from plantain and banana farming if you take it to commercial standard. If people in Nigeria today could sit down and review their living standards, they would realize that most of their complaints for poverty and their inability to take care of their situations were actually their own making.

Why would the city be clustered with hungry people who are doing nothing when the surrounding states are made up of vast expanses of productive farmlands? Why would people prefer to suffer even when they can make millions from farming without stress? Take up banana farming today and see how much you will be making in the next two years.

Market Value For Plantain And Banana Farming

Take plantain for example, Nigerian don’t joke with plantain as they prefer to eat it in various ways both ripped and unripe. Plantain is very good for the body too as it work on the body sugar levels.

Other food like beans, rice, and groundnuts all make very good combination when taken with banana or plantain. Think again about the delicious chips that we like to eat, all these and many more are the end products of plantain.

So without going into much details, looking at various usages of these fruits is enough to tell you the profit potential in this business. For people with entrepreneurial mindset, that is simply money in bunches!

You may be new into farming or has been farming but hasn’t cared enough to consider banana and plantain as all that important.

But with the above brief analysis, we are encouraging you to give it a trial, with the assurance that if done properly,  you will not regret it.

For those interested in plantain/banana cultivation, we will be glad to provide you with just enough knowledge needed to go into its farming and take part of the profits that those already in the business are enjoying.

Guidelines For Starting Banana Farming in Nigeria

Hear what a man said with regards to Banana farming in Nigeria: “I was shocked to realize that I was largely to blame for the poverty I was wallowing in. Since I started plantain and banana farming, things have turned around for good for me and my family.”

1. Look For The Right Climate

Plantain and banana have one thing in common and that is, they thrives very well in an average climate that is neither too hot nor very cold. They do well in naturally fertilized soil or thick compost manure. Having them in groups is another tricks to getting good harvest because they protect each other from harsh rays of the sun.

Alternatively, if there are other trees to provide needed shades that could help to maintain the humidity of the environment, that would suffice.

2. Get Healthy Suckers

Bananas and Plantain are not grown like other plants. They are grown through suckers and as such, choosing healthy suckers goes a long way to producing healthy harvests. Always use suckers from matured and dying plantain or banana plants.

3. Transplant

While transplanting, make sure that the corm or the roots at the bottom is trimmed properly to facilitate good growths. Give five meters gap between plants and keep the plants moist at the early days. Do not over wet the soil because the leaves are not yet out for much water evaporation.

4. Maintain The Banana Farm

Apply any method to have it protected from strong winds. Throwing the dead plantain leaves back into the plantation is good to sustain the needed manure for good growth.

Do not leave much suckers to be attached with a plant as two are usually enough. Cultivating plantain or banana doesn’t usually cost much except the initial capital to secure the land and plant the suckers after which the plants keeps growing unassisted.

Once it starts to produce, another form of work involved is to make sure that strong winds doesn’t get freely into the plantation as that could lead to the falling of the banana trees.

5. Cost of Starting a Banana Farming

Starting a plantain or banana farm is not in any way expensive if you have a sizable land. The only thing that you would spend little money on is the clearing of the farmland and buying of the suckers for planting.

For an acre of land, you may spend less than N300,000 to have every thing done and that includes clearing as the needs may be until the first harvest.

Once a plantain plantation picks up, the owner stands the chance of continuous harvest for the next 20-years or more depending on how the farm is maintained.

6. Recommended Species

The best breeds to go for is the ‘hybrid/agbagba’ species. This is a good specie because apart from producing on time when properly taken care of, its usually very big and long, making people to compare it with elephant trunks.

Maintaining the plants doesn’t entail more than heaping soil around the suckers, removing of the unwanted suckers, fertilization, mulching and weeding once in a while.

Starting a banana or plantain farming is very lucrative because any amount you realized in the first harvest, be sure that with less hard work, you will have an increase the next harvest. You will be making an increment year by year till the next 20 years or there about.

Though the business is lucrative, here is the advice from long time farmers, ‘The size of your farm should depend on the size of your dream, creativity, and innovation. Avoid taking on too much than you can be able to handle financially and in terms of personnel’. Besides, embracing modern farming practices, seeds and technology, be passionate about what you do and give your plantain and banana farming additional time’.

“I had always dreamed of becoming a big farmer. Naturally, I was inclined to the agriculture sector, in which I believed I had some basic skills to do a decent job.”

These are the words of a long time banana farmer in Nigeria who have achieved countless of his dream goals through agribusiness and banana farming in particular.