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Everything you need to know about crop and livestock production, from pre-planting operations to harvesting and storage of crops to breed selection, feeding, housing, vaccination to maturity and sales of livestock.
Talking about crop production, which is an intricate enterprise that requires vast knowledge about the Agronomy, environmental interactions, and the application of available technology to achieve food production. Which is exactly what farming in Nigeria needs to revolutionize food production.
The following areas are very important in ensuring a successful crop production enterprise. These are:
Soil Information, Land Preparation, Mulching, Irrigation, weed management, pest and diseases management, harvesting and storage
ECONOMIC CLASSIFICATION OF CROPS
- Cereal or Grain crops: Cereals are grasses grown for their edible seeds, the term cereal being applied either to the grain or to the plant itself. Cereals include wheat, oats, barley, rice, maize, sorghum, millets, etc.
- Root and tuber crops: These include sugar beets, carrots, sweet potatoes, yams, cassava, potatoes, and cocoyam.
- Legumes: These include groundnuts, cowpeas, soybeans, lima beans, and pigeon peas. They all belong to the family Leguminosae and are grown for their edible seeds.
- Oil crops: The oil crops include soybean, peanuts (groundnuts), sunflower, safflower, sesame, castor bean, mustard, cottonseed, corn and grain sorghum, and flax.
- Vegetable crops: This group includes potatoes, tomatoes, and onions.
- Fiber crops: These are grown for their fiber. They include cotton, jute, kenaf, hemp, ramie, and sisal.
- Sugar crops: These are crops that are grown for their sweet juice from which sucrose is extracted and crystallized. They include sugarcane and sugar beet.
- Forage crops: These are vegetable matters fresh or preserved that are utilized as feeds for animals. They include grasses, legumes, crucifers, and other cultivated crops.
- Rubber crops/latex crops: These crops which include Para rubber are grown for the milky sap or latex which they produce.
- Beverage crops: These crops are also sources of stimulants. They include tea, coffee, and cocoa.
Livestock production in Nigeria was dominated by nomadic pastoralism long before the advent of the British Colonial Administration. It accounts for one third of Nigeria’s agricultural GDP, providing income, employment, food, farm energy, manure, fuel and transport. They are also a major source of government revenue. It has been argued that, livestock, especially ruminants, are the most efficient user of uncultivated land and contribute evidently to crop production. Efficient crop-livestock integration systems have the tendency of allowing nutrients to be recycled more effectively on the farm thereby enhancing crops’ yield.In such a system livestock can be fed on crop residues, like straw, fruits and grains, as well as other products that would have otherwise been disposed of.
Traditional livestock production is varied and complex in nature. It has evolved over centuries of adaptation under prevailing conditions of harsh climate and severe disease challenge. (To read more on livestock follow this link diary-of-a-happy-farmer-livestock-farming )
The economic importance of livestock includes, but is not limited to;
Meat, Dairy products, Fibre, Fertilizer, Labour, Land management
Various animals that fall under the category of livestock include;
Cattle, Sheep, Goat, Pig, Rabbit, Snail, Grasscutter, Birds (poultry), etc