Folashade Farms

An agricultural institution building better livestock, better land, better systems and better people through stewardship, evidence and innovation.

[Folashade Farms @DarlechVentures]

🧵 We thought we were designing a goat farm. We discovered we were designing something much deeper.

Over the past few weeks, we've been asking one question:

"What should Folashade Farms stand for?"

The answers surprised us.

1.
Folashade Farms is not being built as a livestock business that happens to have values.

It is being built as an institution whose values determine how livestock is produced.

The difference is profound.

2.
The foundation is not goats.

The foundation is stewardship.

We believe the earth belongs to God.

Everything we possess—land, animals, knowledge, people, opportunity—is entrusted to our care.

Nothing is truly ours.

Everything is entrusted.

3.
A steward does more than preserve.

A faithful steward:

• Receives

• Protects

• Cultivates

• Improves

• Multiplies

• Gives account

Stewardship is active responsibility, not passive conservation.

4.
Dominion is often misunderstood.

To us, dominion is not exploitation.

It is the wise application of knowledge, work and technology to bring land, animals and resources into greater order, fruitfulness, beauty and beneficial use.

That means good nutrition...

Better genetics...

Healthy animals...

Rotational grazing...

Thoughtful housing...

Research...

Technology...

Documentation...

All become acts of stewardship.

#Stewardship #Agriculture #Leadership #SystemsThinking #Nigeria

[The Nigerian Farmer @Naija_farmers]

A farmer I know planted 6000 heaps of yam at last planting season. At harvest he barely get enough to feed his family

Another farmer planted 4,000 heaps. They could hardly eat pounded yam for about 10 times at harvest.

When asked what could cause the poor harvest.

Farmer A: It's God that choose whatever he shares. It might be good this year while the following year could be bad.

Farmer B: Believe the same theory
Two years ago I took several pick up to the market, farmer B add to his story. But this is what God bless me with this year

Same story with some other Farmers too.
I think majority of Farmers in Nigeria and Africa as a whole are gamblers.
Farmers gambled with rainfall

They gambled with soil
They gamble with pesticide

They gamble with planting time
Israel develop a good water conservation and Irrigation system because they study and understand their rain pattern.

I use to think yam matured in 12 months until I took time to study the planting system

Yam matured within 3 - 4 months
* But our Farmers start making Yam heaps by September and October when the soil is still soft.

* The yam will be planted by March and April in expectation of rain
* Harvesting is July, August
Yam automatically need water

The yam sett get bad in the soil due to lack of water.
Irrigation will be a very great advantage.

Hence the great reduction in harvest.

Don't even bother asking if the soil is rich or not.

The yam also require staking with trellis. Just like we do our cucumber.
Currently yam farming is not profitable because of bad agricultural practises.

The rural farmers will however tell you that this is how their great great grandfather has been planting yam before you were born.

And the surprising thing is that the suppose modern day farmer did not research on the best way to grow profitably but choose to follow the same way our great great grandfather has been planting but expecting a different result.

Yam by my understanding can be grow all year round and it will be highly profitable if all good agricultural practises is employed

-farmritewithYinka

[Versivald @versivald]

Pilar Sanders told a court Deion Sanders was worth $250 million. Her prenup capped her at $1 million.

The agreement was signed on April 19, 1999. They married two days later.

The terms: $100,000 for each year of marriage, capped at $1 million. Her own lawyer from 1999 testified she also received a $100,000 "signing bonus" to sign it.

Deion filed for divorce in December 2011, after 12 years and three children.

The court record:
$24,000 a month in payments was what she asked for.
$10,500 a month in child support plus $275,000 for her lawyers was what a judge ordered in May 2012.
The child support was later cut to $2,500, then raised to $4,500.
On October 24, 2012, Judge Ray Wheless ruled she signed the prenup voluntarily and told her lawyers not to bring the claim again.
In March 2013, an arbitrator confirmed both of them signed it.
On March 12, 2013, a jury voted 11 to 1 to give Deion sole conservatorship of their two sons.

Her lawyers said parts of the prenup were forged, two pages were missing, and she signed under pressure. They wanted a handwriting expert to examine the original.

When she put his net worth at $250 million in court, Deion laughed out loud. By then a judge had ordered her to stay 500 yards away from the house she had lived in.

The case for Deion: she signed it, took the $100,000, and a judge and an arbitrator both upheld it. "This is greed. That's all it is," he said at the 2012 hearing. In 2013 he said, "It's not about the kids. It's about the money."

The case for Pilar: 12 years, three children, and a fixed $1 million against a fortune she estimated at $250 million, set two days before the wedding.

In the video below, in April 2012, she says: "I understand that I have very little chance at beating a Hall of Fame, two-sport man that everyone seems to love and adore."

Should a prenup signed two days before the wedding still hold after 12 years and three children?

[Gbenga Samuel-Wemimo @GbengaWemimo]

Ask Yourself One Question Before Sleeping
This might be my favorite habit.

Before going to sleep, spend five minutes reflecting on your day.

Ask yourself:

“Did I make today count?”

Then think about three things:

What did I do well?

What did I waste time on?

What can I do better tomorrow?

You don’t need a complicated journal.

You don’t need to write two pages every night.

Even a few honest thoughts can help.

Because when you regularly examine your days, you start noticing your patterns.

You realize where your time goes.

You recognize what holds you back.

And slowly, you begin making better decisions.

[Ọpẹ́yẹmí Irédùmarè @iredumare]

In Nigeria Today,

You will need a Minimum of approximately $245k to own and operate a 20 acres (Medium Cost) Ranch that can house :

1. a maximum of 120 -150 Cattle.
2. A grazing zone of 10 acres
3. A slaughter and blast freeze box
4. A staff house of 10 -15
5. Building machineries (never outsource construction) - we have a bamboo splitting machine for example
6. A Resident Veterinarian
7. A Resident Nutritionist
8. Additional 50 rams and 150 goats pen
9. A 100 cattle capacity holding pen
10. 10kva Solar Power

Note: does not include

- cost of cattle acquisition
- cost of staff salary
- cost of medication
- cost of grazing area refresh
- cost of spent grain acquisition
- cost of Farm Truck

[Ogundipe, Esq. @The_Ogundipe]

About 2 years ago, I observed water seeping from the floor in the living room. Initially, I thought that someone had poured water on the floor. I reached for the mop and cleaned it up, but the more mopping I did, the more water surfaced.

I called a plumber that had worked for me in the past. He was always reachable. I explained what I noticed to him and how it worried me to death that water was seeping out from the tiles in the sitting room floor.

He arrived about 20 minutes later. He stared longingly at the wall, grabbed two heavy tools, went down on one knee, and raised his mallet.

"Wait. What do you want to do?" I asked.

"We go break these tiles."

"The problem is from under?"

"I don't know. Na why we go break tiles make we find out."

"Are you sure that the problem is from the ground?"

"I no know. If we break this area and we no see anything, maybe we go break am dey trace am."

It felt like setting out to lose a lot for uncertainty. The house was not mine, and getting exactly the same tile in the market could pose a challenge. My concern was further deepened by the uncertainty expressed by the specialist I had engaged. What if we broke it and found nothing?

I asked him to leave it.

"Let me think about this. I will call you back."

I paid him for his time and watched as his motorcycle roared out of my compound.

I called an engineer who does regular construction work. I asked if he knew a competent plumber that he could vouch for. He said he knew one. He linked me up, and we agreed to meet a day later.

When the gentleman plumber arrived, the water had subsided. He listened to my concern and asked me to take him round the house. Like altar servers following the priest, I led the procession while he tailed me.

"Where does this pipe go?"

"This must be the controller for the toilet."

"This pipe takes the water from the washing machine down, abi?"

He kept asking and asserting as we moved round.

By the time we were done, he had figured out the problem.

"There was an initial plan to have a wash-hand spot here, because it is close to the place that should be the dining area. Maybe they changed their mind and blocked the pipe. I think the pipe is leaking."

"But the water is coming from the tiles, not the wall."

"Yes. If it gets too much, it goes down and forces its way up."

He brought out his machine, made a square mark on the wall, and cut neatly. Within 7 minutes, we saw a pipe. Indeed, it was sealed, but water was dropping. He fixed the issue and asked me to call a mason to do the plastering.

No broken tiles, no guesswork. Precision.

When he told me his fee, the "Nigerian" in me wanted to do what clients do to us.

"XYZ thousand kẹ? Something you did within 15 minutes. Just to break small wall and place a cap on the pipe?"

But I didn't.

I recognised expertise. I recognised precision. I recognised accurate diagnosis. I recognised a professional. I appreciated the comfort that his certainty and zero propensity for guesswork brought to me.

I paid him. He threw his crossbody bag, which had his tools in it, over his neck and bounced away from my house.

No car. No motorbike. No bicycle.

"You are charging me XYZ just for a legal opinion?"

"Haaa, you want me to pay that for CAC work?"

"I have never been asked for a consultation fee by any lawyer."

"Oh, you want me to pay just to look at this small document?"

"You're too expensive. My friend's lawyer charged one-third."

Fees are not just fees. When fees are charged, they often come with an insurance or assurance that is not spelt out.

They do not need to spend days on a task to earn premium fees. A 2-page opinion could carry more weight than a 30-page one, and whether a professional drives a car or not ultimately has no nexus with their competence.

[Folashade Farms @DarlechVentures]

Don't build a large farm and then look for markets. Build a market, aggregation and processing company first, and use farming as strategic backward integration.
Backward integration should not mean "we own everything." It should mean "we control enough production to protect our supply chain."

[Farm Aggregate Ng @farmaggregateng]

The farther you are from the soil, the bigger you can earn in agriculture.

But let's create the balance.

The closer you are to the soil, the better agriculture becomes.

There is money in production, but there is often more value created around production- finance, inputs, technology, aggregation, logistics, processing, storage, marketing and market access.

This is why agriculture is bigger than farming.

However, we must not build an agricultural economy where everyone wants to stay away from the soil.

Someone must understand the crop.
Someone must manage the farm.
Someone must produce.
Someone must solve the problems on the field.

The farmer is the foundation of the entire agricultural value chain.

So, yes, there are opportunities to earn farther away from the soil.

But the closer we get to understanding and solving the problems at the farm level, the stronger and more sustainable the entire agricultural system becomes.

We need more people around agriculture.

But we also need more people who truly understand the soil.

[Folashade Farms @DarlechVentures]

@iredumare @thedonmappyy @southpaw2073 How does the store to sell arrangement work?

[Folashade Farms @DarlechVentures]

@iredumare @VillageFarmsCE @FudFarmer That moving part ehn...
It's inevitable

[Folashade Farms @DarlechVentures]

How do you create an agribusiness generating turnover of at least 5 billion naira on an annual basis?
Where would you position your business across the agribusiness value chain?
What business model would you adopt?
How do you deploy capital efficiently?

[Folashade Farms @DarlechVentures]

@CollinsofYork Nothing to compare really - different scale of operations. We have those two types of operations here in Nigeria - JB Farms, Presco, Okomu etc

https://t.co/JVrTq2Se5h

[Lima @limalemonnn]

this is insane. i genuinely don't understand why ambitious people aren't shown this lecture before their careers start consuming their entire lives.

clayton christensen spent his career studying why successful companies collapse. in his final class, he asked students to apply the theory to themselves: if you keep allocating your time the same way, what life are you actually building?

he had already seen the answer in his own harvard mba class. everyone looked successful at the fifth reunion; by the 10th, 15th, 20th, and 25th, many were unhappy, divorced, and living far from their children.

work shows you the score immediately. close a sale, ship a product, finish a presentation, earn a promotion, get paid.

an hour with your child may produce nothing you can measure today; it may take 20 years to understand what that hour built. so the next free hour goes back to work, one rational decision at a time.

this is how people build lives they never planned: through hundreds of right decisions that lead in the wrong direction, day after day.

money, titles, and headcount are easy to count. christensen believed a life should be measured by the people who became better because you were there.

he died in 2020.

one question remains: if someone saw only where your time, energy, and attention went this year, what would they think actually mattered to you?

the full 19-minute lecture is in the video below.

[Folashade Farms @DarlechVentures]

Figure out distribution first. Try it, make it work and scale it. Everything else along the value chain depends on it.

[Folashade Farms @DarlechVentures]

@iredumare Nice! Well done

[Folashade Farms @DarlechVentures]

@olaMVB They are all important but at the top is seedling or the genetics. Ensure that you get quality and certified seedlings from right sources - NIFOR, Elitepalm, ASD Costa Rica etc. And after that, the right soil and good management practices which will include correct spacing.

[Tigerflow @tigerfl0w]

A billionaire sat in a room for 42 minutes and listed every psychological trick that makes people lose money. for free. the finance industry has spent thirty years pretending this recording does not exist.

he didn't sell a course. he didn't write a newsletter. he sat in a chair at 96 years old and explained why brilliant people do the dumbest things with their money. then he explained why they will keep doing it.

MBA programs charge $200,000 to teach behavioral finance. he covered 25 biases in one sitting. some of them are still not in any curriculum. he gave the entire framework away on camera.

the part nobody talks about: he called crypto antisocial. he said index funds will crush most managers. he said private equity is full of wretched excess. he said all of this in a room full of people who manage money for a living. nobody argued.

a hedge fund analyst at a top firm told me this is the first thing they send to anyone who joins the desk. not a book. not a model. a 42-minute video of a 96-year-old man explaining why you will be wrong and how to recognize it before it costs you everything.

40 million people have heard his name. almost none of them have watched him explain the 25 ways their own brain is working against them.

the lecture is free. he died the following year. it is in the video.

[Folashade Farms @DarlechVentures]

@ToheebAyomide2 This is fantastic. 🎉 We are working on something similar at our plantations.

[Ryomen @Ryomenex]

Harvard needs 8% return every year just to keep the lights on. 5% spending plus 3% inflation. Miss that number and buildings stop, professors leave, research dies.

40% of the operating budget comes from one portfolio. Not tuition. Not grants. One fund.

Jake Xia manages that fund's public markets. He also teaches the math behind it at MIT for free. One of the top five most-watched courses on OpenCourseWare. Millions of views. Almost nobody changed how they invest.

Every year he hands students a blank page. Build a portfolio. No rules. Someone writes 100% Apple. Someone writes rare coins. Confident picks. Same blind spot, every time.

Not one student asks the only question that matters: how much goes in each position. They all pick what to buy. Nobody sizes it.

Sizing is the entire job. The answer won the Nobel Prize. It's called the efficient frontier. Xia draws it on the board in under a minute.

Five equations sit underneath it. Compound growth. Present value. The geometric mean. The Rule of 72. Real return. All older than any bank on earth. All fit on a napkin. None behind a paywall.

A "guaranteed 5% bond" during 4% inflation is a 1% return. The industry doesn't hide this. It just hopes you never run the equation yourself.

The lecture is free. The napkin is free. The only thing that costs anything is not knowing.

[Folashade Farms @DarlechVentures]

@UgochukwuEkene7 @Nig_Farmer This actually the correct explanation of what's going on beneath the surface. Filling sand would have done a better job here instead of the laterite.