Creative Agric

Get Position to tap from the Ginger Billion dollar market.

The 2021 ginger season is now open. There are many players in the ginger value chain, the farmers, local buyers, the seller, the middlemen, the hustlers, the foreigners (trooping to the local villages in their numbers) and lastly you can join the chain if you are positioned well.
This year(2021) ginger season had a lot of factors that worked in its favour, COVID-19 increased the awareness of taking ginger (not suggesting anything), the devaluation of currency affected the price of the commodity.
Despite all this, Nigeria produced 31 million metric tons of ginger while the demand is at 65 million tons that’s 34 million metric ton shortage waiting for you to fill in . However, Nigeria is the third largest producer of ginger in the world. Nigeria’s ginger is the best in the world for its aroma, pungency, high oil content and Oleoresin as its distinctive features.
Ginger open up this season with fresh ginger ranging from N100,000 to N120,000 per ton. Dry split ginger is now going for N900,000 per metric ton; actually this is the farmgate price. International price of fresh ginger hover from $1200 to $1500 per ton, while the price of dry split ginger is dancing around $3000 to $3500 per ton. Ginger powder sells from $25 to $30 per kg, while crystalline ginger flex goes between $3200 to $4000 per ton. Extracted ginger oil selling between $100 or $150 per kg.( Prices of ginger fluctuates like every other commodities )
So, how do you position yourself in this market ? There are different segments of the ginger value chain that you can decide to be a player in. One can decide to play in the farmgates level as a farmer or as an aggregator, from the aggregation centre, processing, distribution and warehousing ( one can do storage to maximize price or hedge against price ) can be undertaken.
Additional, One can decide to go into exporting the following ginger products:
1. Fresh ginger
2. Dry split ginger
3. Ginger powder
4. Crystalline ginger flakes
5. Ginger oil .
Another way to get into these ginger value chain is by being a ginger farmer , get a farm anyway that the soil is suitable for ginger farming . It is a myth that ginger only grows in southern kaduna, they only have more ginger farmers. This makes it why it’s a ginger hub. If you want to plant ginger in the next planting season, now is the best time to get your ginger rhizomes ( ginger seed).
Another means to get into the ginger value chain is by processing , one can process ginger into powder or extract oil from ginger, this pay premium in comparison to just exporting raw ginger without adding any value.
It’s also interesting to understand the different price options in the ginger value chain. There are three price models in the ginger valuechain, namely;
i)Farmgate price
ii) Aggregator price
iii) International price

The Farmgate price is where farmers sell straight from their farm or farmmarket and they don’t understand weight measurement and hence their price is per bag as a against per ton. The Aggregator buys at the farmgates .
The Aggregator price , they established their prices after processing and cleaning the products they bought at the farmgates prices. The aggregators process the products into international and export standard for exporting, he fixes his prices with consideration to what the international prices is.
The international price is one of the main factors that determine the farmgate price and also the Aggregator price. However this price is subject to the value we put in .
Any position you wish to play in the ginger value chain make sure that you are adding value and not just exporting raw material . This create wealth and employment along the value chain and trigger positive economic metric.

The season of covid 19 became an August visitor in February, it has made us to see and evaluate our finance from another perspective.

The question is, if this lock down was to continue for another 2 to 3 months how would you fare financially ?

It will be interesting to note that having only one source of income will not sustain your needs, even when you could sustain there is a need to have an additional source of income or multiple sources of income. it is time to think inwardly, there are products that you can market on the side or there are services that you could provide and this becomes a side hustle.
Through one can employ one or two hands to help as the business scale up, more hands will be added .

The question is what side hustle do you do that wouldn’t distract one from the main source of income till this hustle became another major source of income?

There is a whole lot of opportunities scatter around. look for opportunity that align with your passion and has less distraction. For a start you will be looking at bringing cost to barest minimum.

People must eat and having business in the food value chain sector is sector that people can't do without This sector is a gold mine because people eat daily. Your kitchen will be your production unit for a start and with one or two machines you are good to start. One or two extra hands you are good to start depending on what you decide to do .
Let look at some products / services that can be package from the comfort of your kitchen.

1.Turning irish potatoes into french fries
2. Making fruit juice and smoothie.
3. Spices packaging
4.Tea packaging
5. Cashew and other dry fruit packaging
6. Coconut chips
7. Home baking
8. Tomatoes packing ( Seasonal)
9. Flour packaging ( beans, yam and plantain )
10. Home made chinchin, plantain chips and a whole lot more
We need to plan in all we do and side hustle is not an exception. it is important that you get a business plan, ( this will help you to have a sense of direction for the business, what(machinery and technical know how) is require even at the hustling stage.