Strawberry in Nigeria

If you think that certain imported exotic fruits seen in some of the biggest shopping malls cannot grow in Nigeria, you better have a rethink! Every city in the country can grow something unique. Nigeria is a blessed country with different agro ecological zones having huge potentials.

Strawberry, an exotic fruit, which until now does not receive any serious attention as one of the fruits grown in the country, is now the most important produce that shapes the economic power of the people of Chaha community.

The community, located at the outskirt of Vom, Plateau State, gives the heart-shaped fruit the desired attention from the day they discovered it has the potentials to change their fortune and lift them from the shackles of poverty.

This reporter, prompted by the sale of the produce to motorists along Jos-Abuja Road in Jos, traced its origin to Chaha village where everybody seems to have a strawberry farm- although there are few other strawberry farmers in Jos, Plateau State capital.

A farmer does not need to buy the seed or seedlings every farming year. This is because the vines after production can be transferred as seedlings to another plot in the new farming season. This quality leaves farmers with no burden of looking for seed each planting season. Their major burden is manure, fertiliser and market.

Nuhu Samuel is a 29-year-old strawberry farmer. He told the reporter that he got into the farming after he saw his father making money from it. Although he said he cannot tell where his father got the seed from, he got the seedlings from him.

The father of two children stated that he plants in July and harvests in November. He sells in killogramme-N700 to N1, 000 per kilogramme.

Samuel gets 30 to 40 killogrammes from his farm twice a week, which helps him to pocket between N28, 000 to N40, 000.