Marketing Ideas For Selling Your Poultry Birds and Eggs Fast

1.Bypassing the middlemen-: Most poultry farmers rely on middlemen to help sell their products. They sell in bulk to other people who in turn sell to the consumers. If you want to sell faster, then you should sell both in wholesale quantities and resale quantities. You can sell in retail quantities if you have your own sales outlet. Look for a good location to rent a store and then use it to stock products from your farm so that in addition to selling to wholesalers, you can also sell to retailers.

2.Take your business online-: Everybody hangs around the internet these days. A large percentage of people make use of the internet around the world daily and if you want your business to thrive, you cannot close your eyes to the internet. Your social media account is a very good place to promote your business and increase awareness for your products. If you want to sell your products faster, you should have a strong internet presence so that people can order for products online and even those that do not order online would be able to recognize and buy your products when they see it in supermarkets or grocery stores.


3. Become a supplier to Hotels and Restaurants-: Write a brilliant proposal with clearly thought-out incentives that you can offer and send it to managers of hotels and restaurants. Offer to be their major supplier of poultry meat and eggs. Hotels and restaurants always have foods with poultry meat or foods made with eggs on their menu and they have to get their eggs from somewhere. You can help them to have access to a regular supply of fresh eggs without stress. Note that a lot of hotels and restaurants already have people supplying them, so you should think of how to outsmart these people by offering mouth-watering incentives.


4.Employ Marketers-: Marketers? For a poultry farm? Yes, marketers for your poultry farm can increase your sales by more than 30%. Just employ some commission-based marketers who would earn a certain percentage from the sales they make


5. Feed your Birds well-: Yes, this is a marketing idea too. When you feed your birds well, they produce big and good quality eggs which are what the consumers want. If you want your products to be top choice for consumers, then you have to pay attention to the quality of products you generate and in poultry farming; that means paying attention to the type of foods you feed your birds with because good food equals good eggs and quality meat.


6. Have your own Abattoir-: Don’t just stop at selling to other companies to package; nothing stops you from having your own abattoir too where you can package and brand your own products for sales and supply.


7. Carry out marketing research-: Another way by which you can increase sales of your poultry products is by carrying out marketing research regularly. When you do so, you would be able to have a clear idea of what your customer’s want, areas where there is insufficient supply of products and things you can do to improve the quality of products you offer your customers.


8.Try home delivery services-: Home delivery services work too. This is because a lot of people are often too busy to make trips to the grocery store and then a lot of people love their eggs fresh. You can take advantage of this to offer home delivery services to people who prefer to buy fresh eggs or people who find it easier to order for stuffs from the comfort of their home. You could also serve senior citizens, the physically challenged or sick people who cannot make trips to grocery stores to buy meat and eggs

9. Use Attractive Packaging-: When designing packaging materials for your poultry products, you must ensure that it is attractive and stands out from every other product in the market. Good packaging can attract more buyers. Another thing you must know is that people look now out for nutritional information when they buy food items. So, you should consider adding some information about your products like calorie contents, protein, vitamins and all other information that health conscious people would want to know about.


SOURCE:http://www.farmerstrend.co.ke

Rules for Starting Your Own Farm

Source: Forrest Pritchard , Smith Meadows | Adapted by Hapgon Farming

Rule 1: Avoid Debt! Why is this 1? Why does it have an exclamation point after it? Because—listen up—in the past fifty years, debt has tanked more farms than drought, plague, and pestilence combined Legions of great producers have abandoned their farming dreams simply because they couldn’t pay their debt when the bank came calling. In a nutshell, debt (borrowing money, with interest) allows us to accelerate our goals, turning dreams of tomorrow into realities of today. While borrowed money might buy us a tractor, a new barn, or even the land we’ll be farming, experience, the most valuable farming asset of all, cannot be purchased. Experience doesn’t come with a Bachelor’s Degree in Agriculture, and it certainly doesn’t come from a book. #Agriculture is fraught with uncertainties, surprises, and intellectual challenges. Adding monthly payments to this intimidating list financially handcuffs most people right from the start. So does this mean ‘never take on debt’? Certainly not. There are plenty of times when leveraging assets makes sense. As you gain farming experience, and create reliable cash flow in your business, these opportunities (or necessities) will become clearer. In the meantime, however, embrace this generalization: avoid debt as much as possible.

Rule 2: Allow Yourself the Opportunity to Fail Wait a minute. This was supposed to be about not failing, and now we’re saying failure’s an opportunity? Ironic, I know. Bear with me. Our culture seems obsessed with failure, simultaneously terrified and captivated with the concept. I know people who spend their days avoiding the humiliation of failure at all costs. Some of these people fear failure so much; they never try to accomplish anything. The thought of failure paralyzes them. If failure is a major concern to you, here’s a spoiler: in farming, you will fail. 100% chance. In fact, with apologies to Benjamin Franklin, failure on a farm is every bit as reliable as death, taxes, and Paul Schaffer calling a rim shot. But here’s what no one ever told me. It’s okay to fail. Moreover, in farming, it’s important to fail. While painful at first, failure can be an enormously useful tool. It helps us learn our personal limits of time and energy. It’s an instrumental timesaver in the long run, letting us know what works well, and what a complete boondoggle is. Failure provides us perspective for future enterprises, making us intellectually stronger, more emotionally resilient. So, thumb your nose at that sagging bookshelf loaded with self-help books telling you you’re not a failure. Yes you are! Get out there and fail! But while you’re failing, fail well. Fail gracefully and thoughtfully. It’s the only sure way to recognize success when it finally arrives.

Rule 3: Identify Your Market before You Start Farming Before you plant that first seed, take the time (lots and lots of time) to figure out where you’re going to sell your products, who is going to buy them, and how you’re going to do it. Once you’ve done this, create a backup plan. Then, come up with another backup plan. Chances are you’re going to need them. Small and niche producers spend an enormous amount of effort finding their customers. This is every bit as important as growing the food to begin with, because without appropriate sales channels, fresh produce will quickly languish. When all those watermelons ripen at the exact same moment, you’ll need a place to sell them—and fast. Have a solid marketing plan prepared well in advance.

Rule 4: Match the Land to Its Suited Use We can try to force our human dreams onto the land, or we can work with what nature gives us. Conversely, a few years back, we tried raising free-range ducks. We learned the hard way how they evinced their waterfowl instincts: In a matter of weeks, they turned acres of pasture into muddy ponds. They methodically tipped over their automatic watering troughs (it’s a long story, but trust me, they did it), creating sloppy watering holes in our pastures that we dubbed ‘quack mires.’ In their own way, ducks were telling us that they belonged near water, not out on pasture. We listened. The following season, we stopped raising ducks and have been happier ever since.

Rule 5: Grow Your Passion Everyone knows that farming is hard work. So do yourself a favour: grow something that you love. If you grow what you’re passionate about, it will help mitigate those difficult days when the sledding gets rough and things don’t go your way. It may seem like common sense, but we often find our decisions driven more by finances, tradition, or inertia than by something we truly love.

Rule 6: Set Reasonable Goals Take care of yourself. Burnout is big in farming. You already know that the work is physically taxing, with unique emotional demands. Find your pace. Visualize a fifty-year career, and set annual, reasonable goals that will get you there. Check in with yourself frequently. And by all means, if you raise flowers for a living, be sure to “stop and smell the petunias” from time to time.

Rule 7: Don’t Worry About What Other People Think. In 1994, when I was twenty years old, I found myself talking to an older farming couple at a local picnic. We both raised cattle for a living, but they sold their animals straight to corn-fed feedlots. They asked me about my farming ambitions, and I told them of my dream to sell 100% grass-fed beef. The cattle would be completely organic, and I’d direct market the meat myself. I told them our farm could provide food for several hundred families once I really got going. Their reaction? When I had finished speaking, they turned to each other, made eye contact, and burst into uncontrollable laughter. Eighteen years later, despite this withering response from my elders (they apologized for their behaviour after they managed to stop laughing, bless their hearts), our farm has accomplished all of these goals and much, much more. If I had worried what my neighbouring farmers thought of me, I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here now, typing this list. Believe in yourself, and just go for it. As for that couple? Five years ago, they put a sign up at the end of their lane: “Free-Range Beef for Sale.” The sign is out there at this very moment. Pardon me while I indulge in a moment of uncontrollable laughter.

Rule 8: Have a Sense of Humour When it comes to farming, it’s only a matter of life or death. On any given day on a farm, things die. And not in any noble, dignified, or discreet kind of way, either. Frankly, it puts this whole farming thing in perspective pretty quickly. And faced with the possibility of daily mayhem, a sense of humour can be a handy-dandy coping mechanism.

Rule 9: Read. Ask Questions. Share Your Knowledge. Read everything that hits your intellectual radar. Get up near the teacher if you want to learn anything. Be generous with your knowledge, especially with people who want to learn from you.

5 THINGS TO PUT IN PLACE BEFORE YOU START

Below are 5 things to put in place before going all out on agriculture in order to reap the much mentioned success in the sector.

1. Information/knowledge. How much knowledge about farming do you possess. Like any other profession, farming requires expertise, in fact it requires a great deal of expertise because of the dynamic aspects of agriculture. Information such as weather patterns, what crop to farm and the market, are very important. If you are truly keen on going into farming, roll up your sleeves and learn first.

2. Passion. How much do you want to farm? What motivates you to become a farmer. Many young people are lured into the trade with the glossy stories of success in the media without acknowledging the potentially disastrous risks involved. If you are not so much into it, the returns wont be too much into you either.

3. Capital. Young people interested in farming encounter their first hurdle in terms of capital. This is normal. Remedy for this can be found in the many agricultural support loans being given out by organizations, banks and even the government. The most important thing is the information on how to access these financial services.

4. Total Commitment. There is a new crop of young farmers who engage in farming “via proxy” or mobile phone farming if you will. This does not work at all. Even if you have a good farm manager, there a number of things that will go wrong without your actual presence. For greater rewards in farming, you need to be on site. As a result, urban farming is taking root in the cities.

5. Persistence. You are more likely to be disappointed by your farm in the beginning. This is called the learning period and giving up should not be an option. Wrap the failures under the folder of experience and use it to become better. It is important to expect misfortunes and be ready for them. Just remember to keep on.

SOURCE: http://www.farmerstrend.co.ke/

5 Strategies To Increase Smallholder #Farmer Productivity

1. Comprehensive credit, guarantee and insurance policies geared towards smallholder farmers - Unfortunately, credit is either very costly or not available at all for the majority of smallholders: most banks refuse to lend without collateral. However, many farmers do not even hold the titles to their land. To help address this gap, governments can create a pool fund which guarantees up to 85% of the loan principal – allowing private sector lenders to collateralize loans through the payment of guarantee fees. Smallholders must also contend with the risks of bad weather, pests and disease; in light of this, the availability of crop insurance helps to protect both the farmer and the creditor. This combination of credit and operational risk-mitigation products makes it possible for smallholders to tap into the resources of the formal banking sector, and invest for the future.

2. Loans not just for working capital, but for farm establishment and rehabilitation - Often, creditors are willing to lend farmers money for one harvest cycle, but not for much longer than that. In order to increase yields and productivity over the long run, investments into new planting materials, fertilizers and irrigation systems are often required. But these investments tend to be quite sizeable and may take several years to be fully repaid. Which the need for more appropriate and “patient” capital for smallholder farmers.

3. High-quality (not free) planting materials, farm inputs and technical support - Free or low-cost planting materials and fertilizers might sound like a good idea, at least initially, but these can actually be harmful to smallholder farmers if they are of poor quality, or otherwise poorly suited to the area’s soil and weather conditions. High-quality planting materials and farm inputs are quite literally the ingredients for a good harvest, especially when combined with hands-on technical support from trained staff, who can teach farmers about the latest and best agronomic practices. The focus should be on quality, not cost.

4. Availability of an assured market for all produce – not just the best - Farmers need to be able to sell all their produce, not only those products that meet the quality requirements of multi-national buyers. For a farmer earning just a few hundred dollars a year, the cost of transportation and logistics can be considerable. There are few things worse for a smallholder than to spend hours of his or her time and tens (if not hundreds) of dollars to deliver produce to a buyer, only to have most of it be rejected on the spot. Often, it takes a few years before smallholder farmers can deliver the majority of their products at a consistently high quality, so along the way, a market needs to be available to buy all their produce. This requires multiple types of players, both high-end and lower-end.

5. Presence of local entrepreneurs to drive implementation and connect the dots - Without parties to keep an eye on the big picture – driving the coordination, development and delivery of the ingredients mentioned above – it is unlikely that smallholder farmers will be able to adopt new crops and modern farming practices efficiently and at scale. Local enterprises can indeed be an effective force for change: working hand-in-hand with the public sector, organizing and channelling resources to smallholders, and in the best of cases, even shaping the trajectory of an entire industry. With some creative thinking, collaborative partnerships, and a great deal of hard work, there is a brighter future for farmers.

Source: www.weforum.org 

The Plantain Farm that generates 700k daily, in this Recession.

This Plantain farm sits on 80 acres. 1000 stands per acre. The plantation is one of the biggest plantain farms in Ogun State. My visit to the farm was very fruitful and inspiring one. A place worth visiting. The owner of this farm generates not less than 700k daily on suckers alone. His major customers come from Benin republic and Togo.The demand on his suckers is so high that the farm does not even produce enough suckers to meet his customers demands. For this farmer the Recession in Nigeria would not be found in his Dictionary. Join me next time as i bring to you, exclusive interview on his journey as a farmer.

Mira Mehta - Young Female American Lady Farming Tomato in Nigeria (Tomato Jos)

this video is from New Impact
She is a Harvard Business school graduate who is passionate about entrepreneurship and has decided to pitch her tent in Northern Nigeria, farming Tomatoes. She owns several Acres of Tomato farm and has successfully floated a tomato processing company with the brand "Tomato Jos". #GetInspired.

Agric Enterpreneur - The basic thing to know in Agro marketing

Agro Marketing is moving farm produce from the source point (farm) to the point of need (consumers). The most important factor to consider in agro marketing is the ability to identify where to source agricultural product from and where to sell and where it can be sold to make good profit.

The market moves more where there are busy people.
Staple food differ, staple food for some states are choice meal for others.

Benefits of Agro Marketing

1. Agricultural value chain creates job for different participants.

2. Moving food from where it is surplus to where there are shortages.

Key Knowledge for Agro marketing

1. Know where to buy.

2. When to buy

3. How to buy.

Risk analysis of Agro marketing

1. Middle men.

2. perishable products

3. expensive transportation system

4. Lack of funds.