Inside Taeg Farm where rare crops catch Koreans attention
Ms Elizabeth Amina Jibrin, a retired deputy director at the National Universities Commission set up Taeg Farms with specific interest in growing new crops, vegetables and spices that have comparative advantages.
The farm, located at Shamage, along KeffiNasarawa-Toto road, also concentrates on crops that are ignored by many farmers or are rare in commercial quantity in the country. It sits on an about 10-hectare piece of land
In a chat with Daily Trust, she said, “I like to grow anything (crop) that is new. And whenever I travel out of the country, I spend money on buying seeds not clothes like many Nigerians do.”
What the farm produces
While many farms are producing what is very common, Ms Elizabeth uses her Taeg Farms to concentrate on crops, vegetables and spices that are rare, which gives her economic advantage.
The farm grows Indian lemon, which is very rare in the country; and passion fruit, which many people thought can only grow in East Africa.
She describes how she came to limelight growing passion fruit and mushroom:
“People used to call my passion fruit farm ‘ugwu farm. They didn’t know that it was not ugwu because the leaf looks like ugwu leaf.
“One day I went to the expo promotion council to see a friend and I came across people talking about passion fruits. They were saying passion fruit can only be grown in East and South Africa. I stood up and said I have it, they said no it was not possible. The director in charge of product development and then minister of water resources were there and they said they wanted to see so they came to the farm.
“Fortunately for me, the plants were fruiting when they visited. They took pictures. Till date, in one of the brochures of export promotion the photo of passion fruit in it was from my farm. They couldn’t believe it.
“That year, they were going to a country that I can’t remember now, and they took me along because of the passion fruit and the Indian lemon for an exhibition,” she said.
Beside Indian lemon, the farm grows a herb called sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum) which, she said, attracted huge patronage during one of the trade fairs. “The herb is great for cooking, easy to grow and provides many health benefits. It was rushed and people are asking me if I can get the seed for them. I got the seeds from Turkey and they are doing very well. I have never seen a leaf so big,” she said.
“I also have dill (Anethum graveolens), which is another spice and has a lot of medicinal values. I got the dill at NIFOR by accident because they were growing it as flowers. You can add it to food and you can make it as tea,” she said.
The farm also grows dandelion - a plant that has many health benefits including “relief from liver disorders, diabetes, urinary disorders, acne, jaundice, cancer and anemia,” she said adding that she brought the plant from Ghana.
“There is also pomegranate, but it is not in commercial quantity. There are other things I am doing in small scale but I intend to expand them, like raspberry,’’ she added.
Farm’s oyster mushroom catches Koreans’ attention
Elizabeth told our reporter how the farm’s oyster mushroom caught the attention of North Koreans who came to see what she was doing after they got information that she produced the best variety of mushroom.
She said the Koreans told her that it was the Lebanese that got the mushrooms from Netherlands and supplied it to them, adding “I was shocked. They asked if I could produce a tonne, I said yes. I have the real mushroom house. The whole of last week I was making contacts on where I can get the spawn (the seeds). When they came to me, luckily that day I had some fresh ones which I gave them. They couldn’t believe it.”
Kim Chon Il, who led the North Koreans to the farm said, “It is our great pleasure to visit your farm and see the various cultivations especially the mushrooms, which not many people have so far ventured into in this region. It has great potentials and we look forward to work together and make history.”
Beside the Koreans, she also has requests from some Burkinans living in Nigeria to supply mushrooms for them.
To scale up mushroom production, she will be visiting Benin Republic to buy the spawn, she said.
Major challenges of the farm
The widow said her major challenge is that of finance. She said all her attempts to get bank loan have been very frustrating. She therefore didn’t seem to trust financial institutions in Nigeria.
With tears coursing down her cheeks, she said, “All the struggle is on my pension. My pension is what I’m using for this farm. I wish I can have the fund to buy a greenhouse, it would have improved matters here greatly. That is why when I hear that loans are given it really pains me. I am not exaggerating when I say that the people who are not farmers are the ones getting the loans.”