Introduction
When I set out into the field of agriculture some six years ago I surely didn’t think at some point I would be growing grass for cows so they could fart less!
Nigeria’s uphill battle to get the agriculture sector back to what it once was; before the discovery of oil has been a difficult one, not only has the infrastructure to support this sector completely fallen apart, but we now have climate change to deal with which comes with its own set of challenges.
The north and south of the country have lived somewhat in peace until the herdsmen roaming predominantly in the north had to start heading south for greener pastures due to desertification. Just like in any other conflict what makes the situation even more dicey is the fact that third parties take advantage of the conflict by using it for their own gains.
Cattle rustlers have become a threat to the livelihoods of the communities in the north and south by not just stealing cattle but also violently invading these communities.
In addition to the above, there is now significant conflict between herdsmen and farmers. There are incidences where cows are encroaching onto farm land and eating the harvest, whether on purpose or by accident. While herders and farmers are technically co-dependent and could have a very symbiotic relationship, they are currently at odds, violently so.
This conflict has become so extreme that certain states in Nigeria are now banning open grazing. However Nigerians are happy carnivores with their meat consumption supporting an entire value chain of jobs.
The Solution
When I stumbled upon soil-less farming as a solution on its own it was a fascinating concept, understanding that plants indeed do not need soil to grow. They need water, oxgen and nutrients! How we supply this to them is now the big question.
Hydroponic Fodder is a simple yet efficient way of allowing grains to grow as grass within 7 days, significantly faster than this would be possible in soil due to the reduced stress plants have in an environment where they are not competing for their needs with other plants.
While in theory and in practice this seems simple at a DIY level, there are a lot more questions that need to be answered to consider this “scalable”.
The solution may be easiest when one considers commercial ranches who traditionally have capital to fatten their cows, or increase their milk production, however in many African countries such as Nigeria, small holder and community farmers are the major driver and producer of agricultural products.
Living below the poverty line, this provides a significant challenge for such great solutions in terms of how these can be implemented at a scalable and sustainable level.
Some of the questions we need to ask are:
- How can they afford this (Even at a low tech, simple level there are still costs attached to the system)?
- How can we implement this solution while still respecting the traditional nomadic culture of these herdsmen who have roamed to feed their cattle for hundreds of years?
- How can we find the right type of grain to grow that doesn’t take away from what these communities would normally consume and need (Maize, Rice etc)?
- Will they/can they pay for this system, or would they buy the fodder?
- What is the cost benefit analysis?
- Exactly how much faster does the grass grow in a hydroponic system?
- Can we measure how much less water we use due to the closed circular irrigation system?
- What is the best and most optimal model that can be created for these herdsmen to take advantage and utilize this solution?
- Can we measure the reduced environmental impact and carbon footprint?
These questions and more needed answers!
Frontier Technology Live
Sprint 1
When we started planning Sprint 1, I immediately highlighted that we need to tackle the technical and hardware aspects of this technology first before addressing the social and economic complexities. In doing this, we also needed to identify our end users which we broke down in the following categories:
- Commercial Ranch, for which we would build a metal greenhouse (This will come in two versions, Low Tech and High Tech)
- Herdsmen Community, for which we would build a wooden shed (This will come in two versions, Low Tech and High Tech)
- Home use which will come in form of a simple rack
Experiment 1: Technical Optimisation
This is not our first installation and with our previous project I wasn’t completely pleased with the water supply and drain/recapturing of water in that system, this is why my technical partner Bayo and I wanted to use this experiment to “perfect” it as far as possible and necessary.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED!
Deliberation of the Truckers and Sand suppliers association.
First we needed to get the site ready! My research facility where I run all my experiments is about 1,000sqm big but in a water-logged area so I had to designate a section of the land that we would use for the FTL Project. To ensure we don’t have issues with floods we wanted to elevate the section which is about 200sqm in size with sand.
Just as the trucks started delivering sand, half way through the state trucker’s union decided they will change their fees which of course they first needed to deliberate on with their various association members.
After they finally increased their rates by approximately 20%, the sand suppliers union (honestly I’m not sure if this is what they are called but you get the point) felt left out and also had to proceed on deliberations on how much they would increase the rates across the state.
All this deliberation delayed us by a week, and subsequently increased our initial budget but we eventually got it done.
Nigeria’s fuel subsidy finally comes to bite us in the “gr-ass”
The ground is finally leveled and ready for us to build our greenhouse and shed when the government announces that a bad batch of petrol was imported into the country with increased levels of sulfur which they are trying to retrieve from the specific petrol stations. This started probably 2 weeks prior to our Sprint start.
By the time we were ready to start building the shed and greenhouse the petrol issue still seemed to be there but it had transformed into what seemed like a full scale petrol crisis with queues as long as football fields.
I had just paid our vendor to supply all the materials which he was also aggregating from different suppliers. Materials were only trickling in due to the fact that suppliers were having issues finding petrol to transport everything to our site.
By this time the engineers, technical partners and plumbers were all on ground very eager to work but unfortunately there is an order to how things have to be constructed, i.e. the pillars of the greenhouse have to be built first before the roof can be done (I know it’s common sense, but I’m just highlighting it again).
Materials were not arriving in the order that was convenient, and living in a country where artisans live hand to mouth, they work for daily labour which is around GBP10–15/day if they are lucky, so they really can’t wait around on site with no work.
I was busy coordinating with suppliers and begging workers to stay on site because “the materials are almost here”, some of which would end up only arriving at night or the following day.
At this point I’m just stressed out and frustrated and thinking that we haven’t even started the actual experiment, but it just seems like the experiment at this stage is building a shed and a greenhouse at a 200sqm site which is comparably a small project when I look at projects I’ve managed in the past, but seemed to take everything out of me.
Plumbing Network System of Edward Scissor Hands
While I am personally not a certified engineer I have a knack for putting certain systems together in my head (especially when it comes to the flow of water) and imagining how best they could work, 8.5 out of 10 times I’m right ;) or I’m eventually right, meaning it still has to be tweaked a bit to finally work.
Bayo and I deliberated extensively over the best way to supply the water to these trays, ensuring minimal waste and maximum distribution to the plants.
We came up with a good plan and a simple enough water distribution system.
Unfortunately Bayo who was also affected by our delayed schedule couldn’t be around for the whole installation to come to life.
My loyal plumber Kenny who has been experimenting with me for the past 6 years is a great and innovative artisan without formal training but he is also in high demand and gets very impatient when having to wait around. So of course, he was the first person to leave when we started experiencing delays and he clearly stated he cannot lay the water distribution network without the racks being done.
I put myself under a lot of pressure that I eventually had another vendor build the racks and the moment one was done I called Kenny to come back.
While he was setting up the water distribution lines the racks were being completed at the same time.
Everything was beginning to come together and looking neat which very much pleased the German in me, but will it work???
When we finally had the “overhead tank” filled with water and the moment had arrived to open the valve to watch the magic happen it turned into what can only be described as a “air whistling anti-climatic moment”. Water only came out of maybe 20% of the pipes and I actually think I heard the sound of whistling air coming out from others.
Its already almost dark and Kenny had continuously warned that by that evening he would have to leave and go out of town for another job. By that moment I was mentally completely drained and couldn’t come up with any great ideas that Kenny always excitingly relies on me for.
The following day I was full of energy after a good night’s sleep even though Kenny had left. There was a construction site opposite my farm and I asked their plumber if he can do a little work for me. He was extremely eager to do so.
He comes to the site, inspects the network of pipes and with a lot of confidence basically says “give me 2 x 1 inch pipes and I’ll fix everything for you”.
I was excited, his confidence was contagious and I told my team “give the man whatever he needs”.
If I tell you that by the time he was done, it literally looked like Edwards Scissor Hands came and did his handiwork, you just wouldn’t believe me. He created such a complicated network that I had to trace the pipes with my fingers as if I was tracing to cut a red wire of a bomb.
Of course the whole thing didn’t work!
Chaos makes way for Solutions/Innovation
By this time we had seeds already incubating meaning they would need to be planted in trays and watered regularly the following day.
I had to start looking at plan B while we continued to work on Plan A since we didn’t have a working irrigation system. Little did we know that Plan B had the potential to be Plan A.
There is a simplicity already to the system at this stage as only the top layer of trays requires watering and the water then continues to trickle down from each layer, spreading water equally. This means without a working plumbing network we just need to figure out a way to get water to the top trays to irrigate the rest.
I then had the simple idea of just utilizing a standard gardening hose, connect this to the overhead tank and go from tray to tray for a few seconds allowing enough water to flow.
I did the watering with the hose myself and I was done in a surprisingly short amount of time, so much so that I believe it may not take more than approx. 15min to water a full scaled 200sqm hydroponic fodder system. This means it would take away the necessity for a complex plumbing system with so many pipes and therefore drastically reduce cost and installation time.
I am continuously looking at the day-to-day workload required to manage the system, always asking myself:
- How easy is this to use with little to no education?
- How much will human error affect harvest/the plants?
- Can women manage this by themselves?
- How labour intensive is it?
The day-to-day watering is obviously a crucial element and depending on the weather would need to be done anywhere from every 2 to 4 hours. So, watering manually with a garden hose for 15 min or so seems a reasonable expectation on the workforce managing the facility at a community.
Irrigating with a hose also gave me a much simpler idea on how to adjust the piping network to imitate the way water flowed out of the hose, basically providing thoughts for Sprint 2.
Eventually in the midst of all the madness we were able to somewhat resolve the challenges we had with the pipe based irrigation system, but I was also quite pleased with the semi manual irrigation option due to its simplicity, low cost and efficiency.
With this simple solution I started wondering where other simpler options are hiding in plain sight, I started looking at the physical structure. One major expense is the roof and I start to ask basic questions: “Why the roof?”
The answer is that due to the tropical climate we are in we tend to have extreme weather conditions such as extreme sun (which has the danger of evaporating the water around the roots fairly quickly requiring more irrigation) or extreme rain storms (which can come with significant downpours that cause flooding and in the case of the fodder in its early days could overflow the trays when the seeds are just past incubation and they could quite literally flow out of the trays). However the plants still need both, so how can I provide this in moderation?
I started to think about the palm tree leaves that are used across the country so commonly to create basic shade for a shed, a beach hut or even in thick layers to provide roofing for homes in rural areas. I also really like the idea because these leaves can be installed in a way that still allows some sun and rain to pass through in moderation.
I get so excited when I’m able to think of simple, efficient and cost-effective solutions to otherwise complex problems, which truly fulfills me when these ideas work out.
Thankfully we were able to water the seeds efficiently, initially through hose irrigation and later on with the pipe system that we re-structured slightly to simplify.
The plants grew well and there was finally some relief which gave me more time to further observe and look at where there can be improvements and things we can test, fine tune and experiment in Sprint 2.
Experiment 2: Stakeholder Engagement
You need to understand that this is a problem that has created a significant amount of tension and a cultural divide in a nation that with 350 languages and tribes is already somewhat fragmented.
Based on the above it is a given that there are many people and organizations both in the private and public sector working on tackling this issue from various angles. What became very clear from the get-go is that we didn’t want to operate in silos but instead engage and exchange with organizations and development agencies that are working on this to learn from them but also force us to ask and answer questions we perhaps have not yet considered.
There was also hope that IF some of these agencies are working with herder communities, they may give us access to speak to them or better yet allow us to install a system at a community to capture real life data, not just from the cattle (weight gain, improved milk production etc) but also the cultural acceptance of this “technology”.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED!
We are not alone!
The reception and discussions with various stakeholders working on this issue was truly heartwarming. Not only were they quite excited and receptive to our technical solution, but they helped in providing a lot more context on questions we needed to ask ourselves. There was also an element of patience from the stakeholders, understanding that we may not have all the answers at this stage of FTL, but eager for us to keep them updated on our findings which may in a collaborative manner bring us all closer to a “solution”.
LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION!
Like I had mentioned earlier, I was praying that one of these development agencies is currently working with herder communities and that they would be open for physical collaboration. It turns out we were even luckier than that as everybody we engaged with so far has a physical location they are working with herder communities. All were open to the idea of us setting something up at the communities’ grounds once we are ready.
One of the agencies also agreed to share information such as current herder spending patterns,which will be very helpful in eventually developing a model. The agency has an upcoming dairy project with a herder community and our plan is to set up the system there once we have completed the technical development stage and are moving to the field.
Experiment 2 was a huge success in the sense that stakeholders were eager and willing to engage, but also exchange knowledge and collaborate in the future which is more than what we had hoped for.
Experiment 3: Soil vs Hydroponics
While “everybody” knows that grass cannot grow to significant height within 7 days in soil, there is no specific local data that states to a degree how much faster it grows in a hydroponic system. We felt it was important to set this baseline in our first sprint which will enable us to use this data in upcoming experiments.
Once this baseline has been set we can then generate a cost benefit analysis or financial comparison between soil vs hydroponics.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED!
The Team
For the project we have brought together a great team of people who possess a variety of expertise and knowledge which is such a significant asset to the project. For this experiment we thought it would be good to get a variety of people involved to plan and implement this:
- Tobi Akinropo — Livestock Nutrition Specialist
- Babatunde Olarewaju — Agronomist
- Bayo Imam — Tech and civil engineering
- Mambi Madzivire — R&D and Design Thinking specialist
Together we had multiple sessions which were quite interesting as we all had different views on how this experiment should be structured. Initially we asked very complex questions and while we eventually agreed on the scope and data points we will be measuring, it also turned out to be a bit more complex to execute. We then had a discussion with the whole FTL team and decided to keep it a bit more simple, which doesn’t mean we cannot measure some of these things further down the line but for now is a more agile approach.
Murphy’s Law
Because Experiment 3 was dependent on Experiment 1, I eventually had to make the decision to move the implementation of Experiment 3 to another Sprint. Initially it felt to me like I/We failed because the experiment didn’t get implemented, however in hindsight I realized the planning of the experiment itself such as the data points and protocol was at least half the work and an achievement in itself.
SPRINT 1 CONCLUSION
I’ve never done experiments under the structure of a Sprint before but it’s been a very interesting and helpful experience. Being able to define what assumptions we are making and what questions we are asking provides an efficient process flow.
While the Sprint was ongoing, I was at times very frustrated due to the delays and put myself under a lot of pressure but I also believe that in “failing fast” we were able to come up with other solutions and acknowledge that not all questions can be answered, that’s what the next Sprint is for ;)
