09/12/2021
**Just last week I shared with us the posting below calling for the need for us to plant more palm trees** **I reproduce it firstly**
*UPWARD REVIEW OF PALM OIL PRICES*
* The two short videos indicate very clearly the on-going red palm oil prices at one of the most perceived cheapest items supermarket in Abuja as at yesterday, Thursday December 2, 2021
* I understand that even as the prices of petroleum products are being upwardly reviewed with the so-called subsidy removal, you can quote me saying that palm oil prices might go up at least 30-40% from what it is now
* This is giving me the liberty to remind you of my earlier pleas that everybody should plant at least 10 palm trees for domestic use
* I have revealed to us how a SE Government intends to distribute 10 palm trees to each household...
* I hereby reproduce the write-up dated Thursday, November 18, 2021 fov your guidance as I urge you to begin to make provisions to start planting your own as from May, 2022 the good Lord sparing our lives
**THE MAGIC of 10 PALM TREES***
* I have many times in the past appealed to you on the need for you to find a place to plant at least 10 palm trees for your personal domestic palm oil needs (while the brooms are sold to APC)
* The need for so doing I have always emphasized, was just for the sake of wellness as I have always bluntly told you that the bulk of the palm oil in our markets is more of poison than the purpose they are meant to serve
* I recently stumbled on an APGA Anambra intention sub-titled "AGRICULTURE and AGRO- PROCESSING" that is perfectly in agreement with my position especially as it is additionally intended to address poverty
* Please permit me to verbatim share part of what I saw that had excited me sufficiently to enable me believe that finally Nigeria is beginning to see its redemption if properly copied:
"In addition, there will be a disruptive change which will engineer a return to the glorious past through a revolution in palm produce. Palm produce and the associated AGRO- PROCESSING industries will create jobs and prosperity for hundreds of thousands of farmers/households
"The Government will procure and distribute one million high yielding palm seedlings to 100,000 farmers/households per annum (10 seedlings each per annum), and over a four-year period, each will have at least 40 seedlings of high-yielding varieties which start fruiting in 2-4 years.
"It is estimated that a poor household with 30-40 seedlings of such high-yield palm trees will ESCAPE poverty
"This will be a major empowerment program for at least 100,000 farmers/households, plus the thousands of jobs in the palm producing industries that will emerge as at least 10 million new palm trees are added to the wealth stock over a 10-year period"
* Yes, as a palm trees farmer with well over 20,000 trees on the ground, I am very highly, certainly excited and passionately identify with this intention
* But beyond this, I wonder what other State Governors can say about the cultivation of the following in their respective states are it might be applicable:
1. Rubber
2. Cocoa
3. Cotton
4. To***co
5. Hides and Skins
6. Avocado peers
7. Sour Sop
8. Cashews
9. Banana/Plantain, etc
* These were some.of the very very few produce that the late sages- Michael Okpara, Obafemi Awolowo and the Sardauna of Sokoto used in very healthy competition in financing the Tafawa Balewa-led federal government in the centre in the first Reoublic
* Still in my excitement of seeing a new dawn in our polity that is worthy of emulation is this additional statement in the document that I was privileged to have seen and studied very well:
"In addition to rice, yam, cassava, potatoes 🍅 Onions, etc, the Government will encourage the cultivation and consumption of fruits and vegetables to support HEALTHY LIFESTYLE change as well as for EXPORTS"
AMEN!!!
Mathias Kurah, mni
Chairman/CEO
Yom Kurah Farms Ltd
Thursday, November 18, 2021
**THEN BACK TO TODAY's MEAL**
**INVESTMENT in PALM TREES**
1. How old are you?
2. Have you noticed that when you were growing up, you saw some palm trees already in existence that are still standing up to now?
* Yes, I can walk you to a few palm trees in “the land of my birth” that I think have lived longer than me on earth, and still producing, though very dismally
* As I was growing up, we, as kids used to look forward to when/days when palm oil would be produced in our compound as:
1. You were sure of eating some tiny tiny ones that have no shells in them
2. When the banga was boiled ready for pounding and oil extraction, you might be lucky to be given one or two to eat
3. Or when there was poor security/surveillance as the palms were been unbundled, we stole some and went to a neighboring compound and roast them there to eat, of course, leaving our mouths as if though lip-sticked!
4. After the extraction of the oil, the thick residue became our delicacy for leaking till our stomachs protruded as if we were sick (as the idea of using the residue for feeding poultry was not there then)
5. And for the next few days or weeks ahead, it would be meals with guaranteed red palm oil
..More coming in a literature...
* Nigerians have been severally reminded that one of the “curses” that accompanied the discovery of petroleum oil in Nigeria is our neglecting other key areas of our great economic and infrastructural development in the past, ie agricultural exploration
* You will often hear mention of what our patriotic nationalist leaders did in time past with only proceeds of agricultural produce as against the political class/elites now fighting over the sharing of the proceeds of exhaustible extracted oil
* For example, in the East, reference is continuously made of how Dr Michael Okpara used only the proceeds of Palm Oil, Coal and Cashews to build and develop the:
1. Vast Trans-Amadi Industrial estate in Port Harcourt
2. Michelin Tyre factory in Port Harcourt
3. Presidential Hotels in Enugu and Port Harcourt
4. Obudu Cattle Ranch in Cross River State
5. Owerri Shoe Industry
6. Aba Textiles Mills
* In like manner, the highly respected late sage, the legal- economist, Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the West, using mainly proceeds of Cocoa, established some of the following:
1. Western Television Station, Ibadan
2. 32-storey Cocoa House, Ibadan
3. Premier Hotel, Ibadan
4. Liberty Stadium, Ibadan, officially opened in 1959 for the 1960 independence celebrations.
5. Alafia Hotel
6. Canning Factory
7. University of Ife (now OAU)
8. Bodija Housing Estate, Ibadan
9. Apoje Farms Institute (Cocoa, Coffee, Oil Palms, Citrus cultivation)
10. Fashola Farms, Oyo (Dairy products, Cow and Poultry)
11. Several Farm Settlements in each of the provinces like the one I personally visited at Igboara while at the National Institute in Kuru
12. Ikeja, Ilupeju, Oshodi, Apapa Industrial Estates, all in Lagos
13. Instituted scholarship schemes plus the free education programme.
14. He created Modern Schools for those pupils who could not progress to grammar schools
* And in Northern Nigeria, the Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello used proceeds of Groundnuts, Cotton and To***co to establish institutions like the
1. Ahmadu Bello Stadium, Kaduna
2. The Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria
3. The Arewa Textiles, Kaduna Textiles, United Textiles, Nospin Textiles Mills, all in Kaduna
4. The Nigerian To***co Company, Zaria
5. The New Nigerian and Gaskiya Ta Fi Kobo newspaper in Kaduna and Zaria, respectively
6. Radio Nigeria Television, Kaduna
7. The Kaduna Polytechnic
* Today, the ground nut pyramids that Kano stood for in those days are now being replaced with Ginger pyramids from Southern Kaduna with many parts of the world believing that the Nigerian Ginger is produced in Kano! For another day...Sorry for the digression!!!
* Malaysia, we are told, got its palms seeds from Nigeria shortly after we discovered oil in Oloibiri in 1956? Unfortunately, today, it is rumored that palm oil is being exported from Malaysia into Nigeria for both our domestic and industrial use even as Malaysia ranks the world No. 1 oil producing country
* So that all along, my worry has been whether we are still able to reverse the “curse” and reclaim our sold “birth right” (what the hungry Biblical Esau could not do till his death!)
* And I make bold to say, “YES, WE CAN”!
* But if we are to be able to do so, there are decisive steps that EVERY Nigerian, in all favorably disposed palm growing areas MUST do- from 2021 till the next 10 years: at least each and every one must plant at least 10 palm trees every calendar year
* Unfortunately unknown to many Nigerians (and I wonder what the so-called representatives at different tiers of governance have told their constituents), the APC-led Federal Government of President Muhammadu Buhari had since 2019 made available through the CBN, a whooping sum of N30 billion (thirty billion Naira only) for just palms development in Nigeria, under the “Nigeria’s Oil Palm Industry Development Initiative”.
* Of course, towards self-sufficiency and for exports
* I am told that as the palm oil revolution is on wheels in some southern and middle-belt parts of of Nigeria, Cocoa is being resurrected in the West and Groundnuts and Cotton reappearing in the northern part of Nigeria (No more to***co as the Ministry of Health warns that Smokers are likely to die young!)
* In like manner, the rubber farms in the thick forest belts of Southern Nigeria have also been woken up from their slumber
* And know what? There are many other things that can still be done to reverse and mitigate the threatening post-Covid 19 poverty (we are told that the poor in Nigeria are likely to tripple due to it!) that is starkly starring on our faces.
* For example, Coffee, Irish Potatoes and Apples on the Plateau, if properly developed, is capable of helping the Plateau economy better than the discovery of oil that was celebrated some days/weeks (they should find out what oil exploration has done to the local economies of the Southern Nigeria oil producing states-in fact, the effects of the challenges and issues that mining activities brought to the Plateau are yet to be overcome even as they remain the main genesis of the problems on the Plateau today!)
* So, we must all go back to the fundamental basics and start all over as we have lost our first “love”
* So, for the Palm Oil revolution, the Yom Kurah Farms Ltd along with other farming practitioners north of the Niger and Benue, are complementing the efforts of the Nigeria Institute for Oil Palms Research (NIFOR), have embarked on massively raising some palm nursery plants for planting in 2021, God almighty sparing our lives
* Please work towards being part of this non-political movement as you shield your economy away from the threatening side effects of the Covid-19 pandemic
Thank you for your time
Mathias Kurah, mni
Chairman/CEO
Yom Kurah Farms Ltd
July 16, 2020
