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The Chief Executive Officer of Davidorlah Farms, Oluwasegun Alabi, tells DIRISU YAKUBU, how investment in pineapple cultivation can help address unemployment and earn foreign exchange for the federal and state governments
In the 2024 budget, the allocation to agriculture is about two per cent. Would you blame this for the low agricultural output in Nigeria?
I am not in a position to blame anybody for anything. People in charge of the affairs of this country know what to do. If they fail to do their job; they are answerable to the people. My job at Davidorlah is to work hard to make Nigeria an exporter of pineapples to other countries of the world. We are not going to stop until this vision is realised. Good enough, there are countries now who are ready to partner with us to achieve this vision. So investment in pineapple cultivation can help address the challenges of unemployment in the country and earn significant foreign exchange for the federal and state governments.
Nigeria’s agricultural potentials are huge. I am not just talking about pineapple here. We have the land, technological know-how, and equipment to make farming the biggest foreign exchange earner for Nigeria. No matter how you look at it, people must eat. We cannot talk about development if we do not have food security. But first, we must approach agriculture as a business. We should not see it as something young people cannot get into.
You’ve indicated an interest in attracting 50,000 youths to pineapple farming. Will the selection of these youths be a nationwide exercise?
It is a nationwide exercise but I must add that it’s all about interest. If you check our farms or google us on the internet, you will discover that you have different names who own a portion of the Davidollar Pineapple Farm Estate. And it is not about one language, it is about Nigeria. Once you have an interest, it does not matter whether you are Hausa, Yoruba, or Igbo. As soon as Davidorlah puts out the enrollment page where people can sign in to be trained to become farmers in Davidollar Pineapple Farm Estate, what matters is your interest. This is a great opportunity for the young ones. It is time to stop complaining. Complaints about the government not doing anything will not help us solve any problem. As a Nigerian, what are you doing? Just do your own because when you do your own, we will have a better Nigeria. I am not saying that the government is working. All I am saying is that we should shift our attention away from what is not working to what is working for us.
The money you keep in the house may employ 5,000, it may employ 2,000. Let’s assume that you have 10 acres now, I won’t be the one to be doing the work, we need people to do it. So definitely your money will employ people to do your business for you. And this is what we are operating on and I believe that it is achievable.
Are you in contact with universities to sell this idea, particularly to students in agricultural science or related courses?
Thank you very much. The 50,000 pineapple farmers we want to train who will cultivate about 50,000 hectares, will generate nothing less than 10,000 agronomists, 10,000 farm extensionists, and 10,000 farm managers. So, if you study agriculture at university, there’s an opportunity for you. It is ironic to study agriculture and you are found in the bank counting money at the counter. You are not even fulfilling your calling because we have a lot of people who studied agriculture, and agriculture economics but they are doing something else. Some have even ‘japa’ (travelled abroad) and are doing something else.
As I said before, our youths need to come into agriculture. It is a whole business. At Davidorlah, we want to train young Nigerians and show them the most scientific way of growing and marketing pineapple. When they get involved, they will see why they will never have to look up to anyone for jobs again. Rather, they will be providing jobs for others.
What is your opinion about the call for the control of genetically modified foods?
We are against anything that has to do with genetic modification because a lot of things are happening to our health unknowingly. And this could be because of what we consume. You are what you eat as the saying goes. If you are eating much of these GM foods, chances are that your health is degenerating without you knowing. This is why at Davidorlah, we specialise in pineapples that are 100 per cent organic. The health of our people is very important to us. They must bear in mind the demands and expectations of the international market. If your product does not meet up with international standards, you do not need to be in business. Health is wealth. Anytime I have the opportunity, I always tell people to eat well.
Your work involves a lot of logistics, as you move your products from one place to the other. How is the state of road infrastructure affecting your business?
For where our farm is situated, we have most of the time made sure that the roads are motorable. And apart from that, we have an insurance company to insure goods in transit. When the goods are coming from the farm, they are already insured by the insurance company. We work on the roads too because you can’t wait for the government all the time. We know that some city roads are in bad shape. So, how do we expect the government to fix roads leading to farms? We are dealing with perishable goods and as a result, we do our part to help fix the roads to make them motorable.
Do you intend to give a take-off grant to those you train or help them access loans from the government or financial institutions?
The way we operate is a bit different. At times, when you train people and give them money to set up farms, that money may never come back to you. These things have happened in Nigeria. Take, for instance, they are giving you maybe N50,000 or N100,000. In the end, calculate N100,000 in one billion places. That’s a whole lot of money. But if you give this money to the real farmers to, say, cultivate maize or yam and make them sign an agreement that stipulates the expected outcome in maybe 12 months; when you return in 12 months, you will see results. But most of the time, you give free money without any supervision, and in the end, you don’t see anything.
Davidorlah does not give out free money, where you just come and eat from the national cake. But we can say, to 1,000 farmers, take this 1,000 hectares and farm. We pay them a salary per month and at the end of the farming cycle, they get a certain amount of money. If we empower 10,000 farmers this year, I can assure you that the number will double or even triple next year.
Have you started exporting your pineapple?
We have not started yet but we have the demand and ready buyers. There is no available product yet and that is what we want to achieve. The countries that are key players in the pineapple business are Thailand, the Philippines, and Costa Rica. But the Nigeria pineapple is the best. It has a unique taste. You cannot compare the Davidorlah pineapple with any other. We want to take over, we want to take Nigeria from where it is today to where we are supposed to be because we are not proving who we are. Our identity has been exchanged and then nobody’s identity should be exchanged. We are a producer and not a consumer nation. No matter the situation today, we can change the narrative.
Changing the narrative is ours to do. We must as a matter of collective responsibility make Nigeria a better place. With just a focus on pineapple cultivation, we can address the scourge of unemployment, live decent lives, and realise our dreams. On the part of the government both at the federal, sub-national, and Local Government levels, significant foreign exchange can be earned if the right investment is made with the intent to make the most of pineapple. We have the land, the human resources, and a good climate to make this happen.
How are climate change and insecurity affecting your operations?
Our pineapple farm estate is insured by a reputable insurance company in Nigeria. Talking about climate change, if there is too much sun, we have a borehole to water the farm but if it is raining, you can’t put the canopy on the sky to control the volume of water you need in your farm. Pineapple is a good product. It does not matter the amount of water, it keeps going and if there’s no rain, if there’s a climatic condition where we have a drought and there’s no rain, we have a borehole in the farm, like I said before. Now in terms of security, we are working with some security agencies to make sure that the lives and property of the people are secure. To a large extent, we do not have a problem with the security of our farm but like they say, prevention is better than cure and we are doing what we need to do.
How is Davidorlah Farms managing pineapple cultivation?
I always tell people that you don’t have a business until you have one functioning even without your presence. This is the structure Davidorlah is using. If you go to our farm, you will see the real organisation in place. We have a farm manager, an agronomist, and a farm administrator, who handles the day-to-day affairs. We have farm workers, supervisors, and accountants. As a CEO, mine is to generate ideas and bring them to the table. Those in charge of implementation will then do their job. We follow up on these ideas and at the end of the day, it translates into the vision you had from the onset. I salute the staff and management of Davidorlah for always getting the job done.
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