By Ibraheem Dooba

For Retirees Only: Starting An N11 Million A Year Orchard With N40,000 and Only One Hectare

Here’s how to earn more than 10 million yearly from your orchard with as little as N40,000. And you only need one hectare.

At the end of last year, when I consulted for a former head of service (HoS) on the management of his farm, I thought every retiree should do the same for financial security – planting a tree that’s never enough for global consumption.

– Get one hectare of land.

– Plant Brazilian cashews because they have huge nuts. That’s what we’re interested in, the nuts.

-The tree is very tolerant of drought and can survive a 2-5 month dry season (Duke, 1983).

Usually, one rainy season is enough.

– It will start flowering in a year and get established in three years.-

The spacing should be between 6 to 8 meters between trees. That means you should plant 165 to 175 cashew seedlings on one hectare.

But just go for a round figure of 200.

– A cashew seedling costs from N200 to N1,000. So that’s between N40,000 to N200,000 investment per hectare.In three years, your one hectare will give you one ton of cashew nuts.

Using the current market price, that’s N3 million for your one hectare.- Just contact the National Cashew Association officials in your state, and they will buy from you or connect you to buyers.

But if the cashew plantation will take up to three years to give you money, what can you plant between the cashews that will earn you money within a year?- Plant papaya.- Each papaya tree will earn you N30,000. Since you can plant up to two papayas between cashew trees, you will be tempted to plant a lot, but limit it to 200.- So, from 200 papayas, you will earn N6 million yearly.-

Papaya should take only seven months before you literally start enjoying the fruits of your labour.

But is there a plant that you can benefit from monthly, even before the papayas mature?- Yes.

But that’s for another day. Stay with this page for an update.

P.S. Plant the trees in straight rows because we need the spaces between rows to plant other crops that will give you daily or at least weekly income.Photo credit: Jains.com