[Update: Click here to read the FULL report here]

Arrived from Cotonou yesterday p.m and managed to visit Landmark Centre, venue of the Agra Innovate exhibition on Victoria Island here in Lagos.

The event certainly proved to be great for networking. Almost got myself dragged to do a full lecture on Farm Biz marketing with a group. Before then I’d run out of flyers I could give out!

I’ll write in more detail by weekend. But here’s an appetizer of talking points I’ll be focusing on, based on my discussions and interactions with various stakeholders.

1. Farm CEOs Lack of  Sales and Marketing Savvy REMAINS a major problem.

It’s a serious challenge limiting what I estimate to be over 90% of farm business owners and agro allied entreprises.

In less than 3 hours at the exhibition venue, the conversation I had with various stakeholders there proved most still do NOT understand that they have to THINK as entrepreneurs, with smart marketing drive, if they want to succeed with their agro based businesses.

I’ll be sharing highlights from my interaction with a VERY animated group of farm business owners who found my ideas in this regard so compelling that they arranged themselves into a semi circle, to listen to me explain further.

2. Products made from Cassava – Going beyond fufu, gari and other basic food items.

I came across a German Not-for-Profit which has established itself in Nigeria as a force to be reckoned with in supporting small and micro scale farmers to develop sustainable strategies to process their farm produce into high profile products e.g chips.

I was given a package I will make digital copies of and put on my website for viewing. They also gave me a sample of one of their cassava chips. There was also a booklet on making Potato cakes.

The key here is taking basic farm produce and using processing to create new products that command superior pricing and yield better profit margins for the farmer.

3. AgroNigeria – a 100% indigenous magazine on Agriculture

It’s amazing that MORE people are not talking about this magazine. On my part, I’ve been buying magazines on Agriculture from local newstands, which I found are actually published abroad – even though they have “Africa” in their titles!

With AgroNigeria, what we have is a magazine whose content is devoted to our market, and designed to add useful value to help various sectors of our indistry grow.

I spoke with the MD, and we found several areas in which we shared similar sentiments about what is needed to move the industry forward. I intend to highlight a few when I write my full report on this outing.

There’s more, but these are the main ones I felt most impacted me. If you were there, maybe you could say a word or two in the comments, now, or when I post my full report on this. I intend it to be a downloadble PDF so as to send it to other stakeholders who may find the information useful.

Stay tuned!