Yearly, the demand for MORINGA seeds is always much higher than the supply.
If you do a search on NairaLand forum for MORINGA seeds,
You will see posts such as: "10 tons (10, 000 kilograms) moringa seeds needed urgently"
"Moringa suppliers needed urgently", etc.
And this happens almost all year round. I remember when a kilogram of MORINGA seeds used to go for N5,000 or more.
In fact I sold MORINGA seeds for N6000/kg before! Imagine that?
Is there any other agric produce that could cost that much?
Maybe few! But what about the demand?
Did you know you can make moringa oil from seeds at the comfort of your home?
Yet, there are very few MORINGA farmers in Nigeria. In places like Benue State, where you have so much land lying fallow, farmers can turn them into MORINGA plantations. It baffles me that despite the yearly demand for MORINGA seeds, we keep waiting for the trees growing in the wild to blossom and fruit when we could just do MORINGA farming just like we do orange plantation farming.
Nigerian youth, kindly consider MORINGA farming not just buying and selling alone. That way, you would make money from the buying and selling business PLUS proceeds from your own farms. Come to imagine having a MORINGA plantation on one hectare(10,000 squared meters) of land. Let us consider a farm for seeds majorly. That way you would have do give a spacing of at least 2.5 metres apart both inter and extra spacing. You would have at least 4000 trees in one hectare, I guess. Now consider that during a year, MORINGA will fruit at least once, some twice.
Assuming a tree gives you 1kg. One kilogram of MORINGA seeds contains approximately 3000 pieces. Usually one matured moringa pod contains about 20 pieces of the seeds. To get one kg you would require about 150 pods. One MORINGA tree when fully matured can give you minimum of the 150 pods per harvest, some more than that, especially the pkm1 hybrid seeds. It means Therefore 4000 trees would have translated to 4,000 kilograms or 4 tons. Remember, I am being conservative here.
Now if you sell a kg at N1000, multiplied by 4000 equals 4M! Minus all the costs, you should net minimum of 2M per harvest! Come on that is good business. By the time you increase your farmland to 2 hectares, double the money and do that for five years, you know what that means.
But come to think of it, an average MORINGA tree spans generations!
I remember the day I travelled to Gombe state in search of moringa seeds, I got to a certain settlement and was shown a tree that is 40 years plus! The person that inherited it said his grandpa planted it. Now you see that investing in a MORINGA plantation is tantamount to establishing a generational business for your descendants. Smiles :)
On a serious note, let us start farming MORINGA on large scale. China alone can buy off all even if we have millions of tons.
But if you think otherwise, consider doing the farm for the sake of posterity. Your great grand children will thank you for it and your memory will blessed even after you gone yonder.
What does it take to start a Moringa seeds plantation?
You asked? Check back for a propable answer.
I rest my case.
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