Plants

Farmers face a lot of challenges during cultivation processes. In crop production, there are two prominent challenges; they are pest and diseases. Pests are very disastrous; they are the carrier of plant diseases and also damage plant parts. Control of pest is very important and has to be treated as cogent as possible.

 

The plant population definition is similar to the human population. It is the number of plants the farm can accommodate; through this, one will determine the number of seeds or sucker or other planting material to use for planting operation.

Soil solarization is an organic soil treatment method that helps control pests residing in the soil. The health of the soil is a major concern in crop production. Farmers face huge problems resulting from the poor state of the soil, thus, this leads to reduced yield in crop production.

There are various factors that determine the success of any crop cultivation. Part of them is soil pH; it involves soil acidity and alkalinity, usually. Soil pH is the degree or amount of acidity or alkalinity of a soil. It is important and highly recommended that farmers test the pH of their soil before planting.

Different crops have individual pH preference; some crops are acid tolerant while others are not. In order to put the round peg in the round hole, that is, knowing the type of crop to plant on a particular land, testing of soil pH is highly recommended.

Floating method

 

What makes most farmers fail is not lack of capital or labor but their inability to attest to the viability of the seed they planted. Seed viability test is very important in the cultivation of crops; you need to know how efficient and productive your seeds are before planting. This is part of the pre-planting operations a farmer must carry out before cultivation. However, most farmers boycott this operation in the quest to reduce or minimize the cost of production.

Seed treatment is one of the pre-planting operations in crop production. This practice is obscure to most farmers, especially those procuring seeds from agro-allied companies; they feel treating the seed is irrelevant. What most farmers are familiar with is crop protection, through the use of herbicides and pesticides.

 

It may sound very funny but believe me, you can be a millionaire within a year from cashew farming. The future of agriculture lies on tree crops and not cash crops, if I may say. Tree crops like cashew, orange, cocoa, and others are more profitable and valuable than other crops, especially in the international market. These crops have more market value; they are the most promising means of earning foreign currencies in agriculture.

Cashew production is one of the fast-growing crop enterprises. The economic value of a cashew tree is increasing at a spontaneous rate owing to the health benefits that have been recently discovered in cashew nuts and cashew apple.

On 21 May 2018, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) confirmed the outbreak of newly discovered species of Armyworm, Southern Armyworm, in the southern region of Nigeria. This pest was first noticed in December 2016 on 450 acres cassava farm in south-eastern Nigeria and also in southern Benin in 2017. It is the Southern Armyworm (SAW).