Hello everyone, welcome to my blog on my last post here I talked about my journey to the EYiA, enterprise for youth in agricultural and as I begin to ponder the training I discovered today marks exactly 1 month after the three months training we had at the soilless farm lab Awowo one of the largest soilless farms in Africa if it's not the big currently and today I will be talking about some of the experience back at the soilless farm lab Awowo,Ogun state
One of the things that intrigued me on arrival was the first lecture we had with the team lead of the soilless farm lab farmer Samson Ogbole popularly known as the wizard fermer team lead soilless farm lab in that lecture he talked about money the philosophy of money and how businesses grow the most amazing part for me was when he talked about three stages of a business
The first stage he talked about is the start-up stage when he said at this stage the business is broke and the money involved is your personal money as an entrepreneur and he went further to say as an entrepreneur you are a desperate entity from your business and the first stage ends when you are able to show results and then the second stage begins when people see your result and invest in your business at this stage the business and the entrepreneur aren't broke anymore but at the same time are not rich cause you have to replicate the result of stage one once again and also create a system where the business can run without you as an entrepreneur being present and the third stage is the stage where government and financial organisation no recognize you and are able to fund your business
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We arrived on a Saturday and after the whole registration stress and the beautiful lecturer that night we got to be very late and tired and as a result I couldn't make it to the chapel for Sunday's worship as I spent half of the day hibernating on Monday morning at about 8am we all gathered at the ground gazebo of the soilless farm lab about 1000 of us and we received a welcome address shortly by the communications officer miss Grace
Shortly after we were introduced to our facilitators who took us to their offices and gave us reflective jackets and helmets there after we proceeded to the store houses to pick up tools for work the first one month was filled with work as we cleared the land in preparation of our green house construction and leveled and did other construction related work the fun part of EYiA for me were the extra corecula activities
On completion of one week on the farm we were given an orientation on the rules and regulations that governs the farm by the Safe guarding office
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First up was the burn fire night after about three weeks on the farm we had our bon fire night we played games and music was played we danced and sang the high point of it was the Asun part where we collected meat and chapman 😆 and after a lot of singing and dancing the night was over
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The sport activities started with football, volleyball, table tennis Scrabble and chess were the games available for competition between the groups the sport centre on the farm has a football field, a state of the heart basketball court, a volleyball court a table tennis board snooker board badminton court and board games werent left our as there was Scrabble, chess and ludo games were available not forgetting the viewing center where we gather to watch football games which was also side by side with the playstation 3 and 4 respectively all this innovations have made it possible for young minds to stay on the farm as the programme accommodates partners within the ages of 18 to 29 years of age
EYiA is a programme out together to empower women and youths in agriculture and as such the programme was 75% female and 25% male this has made international bodies like the master card foundation to parternee with the programme as it is a work learn and earn programme with a stipends of $50 for the period of three months
MY EXPERIENCE
During the three months period at EYiA I got to learn green house construction from start to finish, hydroponics farming which is a protected environment for the crops safeguarding the crops from pests and diseases also I got to learn about Geoponics and aqua ponies and a little insight into aeroponics I learnt the power of teamwork and how tasks can be achieved within a short time through collaboration not forgetting the two days business training which we had in order to be a balanced entrepreneur in the agric business space
we also got to connect with like minds from different parts of Nigeria as there were people from the North, South, East and Western nigeria we had different classes and interactive sections with other parterners and other guests who came in occationally to share with us their humble beginings and how they finally made it as farmers in the agricbusiness space.
There was also cooking competition between the 20 groups in participation, there was also a spelling bill competition in which four groups came together to form a cluster
There were two remarkable events which we observed and they are the world environmental day on this day partners and facilitators went around the farm and cleared bushes picked nylon and plastic materials as a way of celebrating the world environmental day and on June 7th we celebrated the world food safety day with the theme PREPARING FOR THE UNEXPECTED oth the day a panel section was held and parterners were enlightened about the food value chain and how that food needs to be safe because 1 out of every 10 persons in the world suffer from food burn diseases and in order to prevent this the value chain from production to final consumption of food has to be safe
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the ground finally which was the EYiA night/ music talent hunt this event was featured a pageantry section where different group representative dressed in their native attire and then for the main Mr and miss EYiA the theme classic white and black saw group representative dress with different outfits in accordance with the theme there was also a question and answers segment to test the intellectual capacity of the contestants in green house farming, hydroponics and farming generally for the music tallent hunt the 20 groups were sub divided into clusters and 5 groups made up one cluster and every band was made up of fifteen members and at the end of the music competition cluster 2 was victorious this saw the group win a cash price of $312 for the group overall the EYiA cohort 6 known as the Eyia Elit was an interesting experience and at the end of the cohort 80 green houses were built, 60 hydroponic and 20 Geoponics was setup, 40 irrigation systems was setup,
18800 cucumbers, 8000 bell pepper and 4000 habanero pepper were planted through team work and all these were achieved within the space of April 12th and june 15th and its a testermant to the fact that farming can be fun and at same time make you rich whin its combined with agricbusiness
Thank you for stopping by
Besides the stress from working on the plants, you guys really had fun there. The type of planting you guys were taught is very reliable in terms of plant prouce quality but quite expensive.
Yeah the leadership of the soilless farm lab have carefully planned in activities and put infrastructure in place to make sure young people wanna stay on the farm and hydroponics system of farming makes sure food exoecially vegetables production isn't seasonal
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