Farming or Agro-business?

You will be coming across these two terms a lot in the course of browsing through this website and I found it expedient to pass across to you what I meant by each of them.

I don’t want you confused.

Many people use the words interchangeably to the point where they begin to assume that the two words hold the same meaning. Well, they don’t.

Farming and agro-business are not exactly the same thing.

You can be in the Agro-business without being a farmer while you are an agro-business man if you are in farming.

Farming is an agro-business but agro-business is not just solely about farming.

Farming is just one tiny, albeit key component of the trillion dollar agro-business worldwide. There are so many other agro-business components that play crucial roles in getting farm produce from the farms to our tummies.

Farming, simply put, is the cultivation of crops and the rearing of animals to sustain and maintain human life. It is usually carried out in landed enclosures and managed by a farmer.

A small time farmer may however be concerned with providing just enough to feed his immediate family with a small fraction left over to sell at the nearby market and seeds for the next planting season. Such a farmer may decide therefore to plant more than one food crop, thereby accommodating cassava, cocoyam, vegetables and a couple of fruits on the same farmland. A section of his farmland may even be structured to keep a few chickens and goats to provide protein supplements for his family and of course the extra cash.

A cash crop grower however thinks much bigger than that. He is the Mark Zuckerberg of the farming world. He is thinking growing more, producing more, feeding more people, and ultimately making more money. He may not necessarily work harder than the small time farmer, but my jove, he is bound to make a thousand times more for his endeavour.

Coffee, cocoa, groundnut, are the types of crops they go after. Crops that would still command good prices in foreign markets.

Agro-business however only starts on the farmlands where these crops are grown and animals are kept. A lot of efforts, logistics, personnel and know-how are still needed to transport the produce from the farms, store them properly to keep them fresh and healthy, process them into consumables and deliver them at our doorsteps – the consumer.

Well, maybe not necessarily at our doorsteps but usually in supermarts, markets and any Mr Biggs near us.  

So, farming produces banana, while agro-business delivers plantain chips to us.

One gives maize; the other blesses us with popcorn. The one keeps the cow that supplies milk; the other brings cheese and chocolate to us. One provides the cotton and wool; the other clothes us in the coolest and most attractive attires. One grows the trees; the other supplies the lumber to build our houses. One tends to the super-plants; the other sells us the body creams that give us a glowing skin.

I can continue with that all day. It only takes looking around to see how farming and the agro-industry impacts our lives daily.

In conclusion, farming provides the raw materials that the rest of the agro-industry converts to finished products that sustain and enhance our lives daily.

One cannot do without the other.