Four Ways You Can Make Cool Money From Yam Cultivation.

"Yam is a magical plant which can fetch you lot of money from where you least expected", this statement was uttered to us by a yam farmer with over a decade experience in yam cultivation.

Few months ago, I was in a chit chat with a brother who manages our enterprise farm activities in Osun state, as usual, we always use our spare time to deliberate on various opportunities available in agricultural sector.

During one of these forward thinking discussions, I got to know that my companion, our farm manager has great expertise in yam cultivation as he boldly told me he's never use money to buy yam for the past four years, and he eats yam & pounded yam throughout the year.

Surprisingly, he does not take this as a means of making money, rather as a hobby and possibly to reduce his feeding costs.

Quickly, my inquisitive mind activated my business thinking mood and I scanned through Business Model Canvas for yam cultivation and had deep thoughts on Revenue Streams for yam farming.

Alas, I came up with the following sure bet means of making money from yam cultivation:

1. Yam Cultivation: Anyone who has the wherewithal such as land or access to fertile land, passion for farming, expertise/ready to seek the help of a mentor and a sum of #180,000 or less can easily own an acre cultivation of yam with 1400 heaps or less depending on the size.

You can opt for less than an acre cultivation depending on resources at your disposal.

The sum quoted above will be spent on land rent, land clearing, tilling, making ridges, procurement of yam seedlings, chemicals, workmanship from planting till harvest.

It takes about 6 - 8 months for yam to mature (depending on the specie, the soil type and whether condition).

Our yam farm activity calendar follows the pattern of those farmers who plants yam in October/November and harvest the next July/August.

Planting and harvesting of an acre cultivation of yam can fetch you an estimated revenue of #350,000 with the assumption that you get 1400 tubers of yam and sell this at #250 each. Just compare both revenue and cost to ascertain your profit.

This is not even the real money compared to what you will realize from the proceeds of yam seedlings, study the second means of making money very well.

2. Sales of Seed Yam/Cut Setts: To plant an acre of land with 1400 ridges, we spent #98,000 to procure the seed yam alone, a whopping sum of money and major cost component.

"Yam is a magical plant."

From a tuber of yam, you can get 10 - 15 cut sett after harvesting the real yam.

Glory be to God, I got this from my farm despite unfavorable weather this year, this was the statement of a yam farmer who supplied us yam seedlings this November 2020.

Let's do some calculations here, after haggling and pleading, the man sold yam seedling for us at #70 each.

Assuming you get 10 seed yam each from each heap in an acre cultivation of yam and you choose to sell half of it, you will realize a whopping revenue of #490,000 (1400 x 5 x #70) from the sales of yam seedlings alone after reserving the same quantities for your next cultivation.

By now, you can decide for yourself whether you should be a yam farmer or not.

And you can see reasons why someone like my farm manager can't do without planting yam annually. In fact, he took permission from me to quickly set up his yam farm few days ago.

Of course, permission was granted with alacrity as he's the same person to nurture my own yam farm.

3. Yam Depot: Another cool means of making money from yam is that if you can't cultivate the land and plant yam, you can also benefit from the yam value chain as a yam trader or someone who merchandises yam.

You may choose to have "yam depot" in your locality by buying delicious yam cheaply from states notable with yam farming such as Benue/Niger/Oke Ogun Areas of Oyo State and sell in major cities like Ibadan, Lagos, Abuja, PortHarcout, etc at a profit.

Of course, this allots you place and time utilities which you can maximize for profit making.

4. Yam Processing & Packaging: One of the cool means of making money from yam is to process and package yam products such as yam flour, yam chips, etc.

If you have the needed resources and expertise you can do the processing and packaging yourself or choose to market for major yam flour producers.

This will offer you opportunities to enjoy form utility at a profit.

Above is the result of my brainstorming on yam cultivation using Business Model Canvas as a guide with an emphasis on Revenue Streams.

This post actually recognizes four revenue streams from yam cultivation which you can deploy to make dough from yam farming.

Always feel free to your share your thoughts or clarification in the comment box below.

Ismaeel Akintayo O
The Merciful Merchants