A week from now Insha’Allah this entire field will be transplanted and full of tomato seedlings. For now, the TJ irrigation team is working to level out the ditches that will feed each bed. Everything in the picture will be farmed and manages by our #smallholder farmers. This season we are going to try to use siphon pipes in our irrigation system. Who here knows what a siphon pipe is? Well, don’t worry: we are going to teach you. Essentially, a siphon pipe is a curved pipe which conveys water from a higher altitude to a lower altitude.

🚨Y*I*E*L*D 🚨 U*P*D*A*T*E 🚨
Our farmers averaged 6.93 metric tons per hectare for maize this season! 🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽Their cost of production was about NGN60,000 per ton (inclusive of both their loan and non-loan costs). We move!!! With maize, the yield depends a lot on the stand count: how many cobs are you able to grow in one hectare? We have our farmers plant maize at a closer interval than they are used to, which means the field also needs more fertilizer, since there are more “mouths” to feed.

We’ve heard that some other tomato companies are setting up greenhouses as nurseries in northern Nigeria, so we thought it might be beneficial to explain and share our own process too! Tomato Jos has been using this system for 5 years 😊

Step 1: de-clump your potting substrate. We use a type of peat moss (not pat moose 😉) that we bring into the country from Europe. We have tried other types of potting substrate including coco peat and a mixture of soil and manure, but have found that for us, this product works best. It’s highly water absorbent. 💧💦

Wow! What an insightful trip. Here are a few lessons that we learned. (Short thread!)

https://twitter.com/teamtomatojos/status/1121700977428652032

First, farm labor: this farm found that decentralizing the recruitment of casual labor made it much easier to find workers, and to hold them accountable to the work. Rather than having HR source the labor, the people who need them to get their work done should be responsible.