best farming business in somalia

[original dervish]

Raising livestock is far more profitable than small scale farming.

[gurey25]

Raising livestock is far more profitable than small scale farming.

spoken like a true geel jire,

The camel fever is strong in this one.

I have an uncle that travelled and worked around the world in the 1940's to the 60's set up businesses made money, lost money and then made it back.
Came back as a big shot taajir in burco, invested all his money in camels and sheep/goats and retired to the bush.

This is what i call camel fever.

[gurey25]

Grant Sourghum is more nutritious than corn when it comes to protein and minerals,
Corn has more fat, carbohydrates i.e calories per kg and surprisingly more vitamens.
and sourghum is better drought tolerant and needs less water.
Pearl Millet which is not popular in somalia is even better than sourghum in drought and has more potential for improvement.

The northen dryer regions should explore pearl millet, as it will grow from 350mm rain to 600mm this means large parts of toghdeer could be farmed like gabiley but with pearl millet instead of sourghum and corn.

This opens up parts of galgaduud and mudug as well the rainfaill is not enough for sourghum but it is for pearl millet,
and can be grown in the same region where they grow the cowpeas that are popular in the region.

[original dervish]

Gurey....with the lifting of the livestock ban by Saudi the price of livestock has gone through the roof.
I know of many folk whom are pooling their resources to deliver a boatload of sheep to the hAj markets, where it's not unusual to see prices of $400 and above per sheep at Arafat.
My aim, insha'llah, is to raise my own animals on a ranch, specifically for this market Ramadaan-Haj.
You can keep your millets and corn.

[Grant]

Grant Sourghum is more nutritious than corn when it comes to protein and minerals,
Corn has more fat, carbohydrates i.e calories per kg and surprisingly more vitamens.
and sourghum is better drought tolerant and needs less water.
Pearl Millet which is not popular in somalia is even better than sourghum in drought and has more potential for improvement.

The northen dryer regions should explore pearl millet, as it will grow from 350mm rain to 600mm this means large parts of toghdeer could be farmed like gabiley but with pearl millet instead of sourghum and corn.

This opens up parts of galgaduud and mudug as well the rainfaill is not enough for sourghum but it is for pearl millet,
and can be grown in the same region where they grow the cowpeas that are popular in the region.

Gurey,

Add any legume to corn and you get a complete protein.

The North and South are essentially different. The South gets enough rain for corn and can usually get a second crop of something like sem-sem during Hagai. Historically, the animal herders couldn't get into the best plant-growing areas because of the Tse-tse. With the land clearances for production and charcoal, this has changed/is changing. Even Jilib had cow and goat herds and some camels when I was there and the cleared area has been greatly expanded. Crops and no tse-tse means you have feed for animals that does not rely on recent rains. You can buy animals during drought times and sell when the price is highest.

Ranching (Growing the food your animals eat) is far more efficient and under better control than simple pastoralism, which depends on what is naturally available and is left by the neighbors. My mother's family in Ohio farmed corn and soy beans on 160 acres. They sold the corn and beans and fed the stalks to sheep. My father's family irrigated 250 acres of desert land, raising grass and alfalfa for hay and selling 90-110 beef a year. And they had 5-6 months of snow. Theoretically, with water, you should be able to do even better in Somalia. Even pearl millet has stalks.

[Rabshoole]

$6000 in 5 months? That ain't no profit.

[original dervish]

Grant...Somalia needs a common agricultural policy, with trained agriculturalists and extension workers.
However, the greatest instability has always been in the fertile regions.

[gurey25]

I was surprised to find that Panicum Turgidum is the most common grass in the North from Zielac to sool.
There was a study about feeding it to cattle and the results were that it competed well with corn and other common feed.
Panicum grows in 70mm to 250mm of rain this covers all of somaliland, even the guban semi desert.

People in Niger, Mali, Chad, and Mauritania used to gather the grains and make bread and porridge,
its still done today in mali.

There are other wild grains that also do well in the somali environment imagine if we could introduce them it would be amazing.

Even Panicum turgidum can be improved, i believe someone has already bred it with poroso millet a close relative farmed in China and Russia
to produce higher grain yield and more nutritius stalks for the animals.

There is also a wild perrenial version of Pearl millet that does well with less than 200mm of rain,
there is wild perrenial rice, perrenial version of Teff that is successfull in South africa for sheep and cattle feed.
aparently animals love teff.

ofcourse it grows in somali conditions as well.


Original Dervish
If you can afford the ~$5000dollars in materials and labour, and the services of a civil engineer and 100 of your unemployed relatives
you can build a Sand Dam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_dam in your home region sool in one of the tugs feeding into the nuugaal.
depending on the location and correct placement you can get an average of 6000 cubic meters in a years time.
This is enough for about 500 to 1000 peoples daily needs and 50ha -80ha of irrigated land.
You can set up your own village man, and have thousands of livestock, even during drought.
Infact you can buy them sor cheap during drought and sell them high.

It just needs one person to do it and be successfull you will have hundreds of somali copycats.

[Siciid85]

I like this thread a lot. Very informative

[original dervish]

Gurey.......I've already looked into water catchments.....subsurface dams wold be more suited in the nugaal.
As for feed, I would go for Rhodes grass, Atriplex, salt bush, Prosopis Tamarugo, Alfalfa, and opuntia.

I would be using irrigation as well as baling, curing, pellets etc.
My aim would be to start off with around 500 sheep and goats and breed them.
If the ranch is a success I may buy in some extra animals.
I reckon 5000 head per year would be my maximum.
PS what do you think about crossing the Somali blackhead with South African Dorper.
. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorper

[gurey25]

The Dorper is a hybrid of the somali and dorset.
its already somali saaxib..

and Prospis? ok i read the FAO study on tamurgo plantation its very good , but why bring an invasive species?
Its ideal for the sool/nuugaal but there is already a native tree that matches it in performance.
Balanites Egyptica and other types, Balanites is native to northern Somalia and spread to India.
Sheep/goats and camels already eat the fruits and leaves.

You should be caregull in introducing non native grasses,
native ones are just as good.

[original dervish]

The Dorper has been bred & improved for almost 100 years, it bares little resemblance to the original breed.......crossing it with Somali sheep will reinvigorate the breed.
The Prosopis Tamarugo is ideally suited to large swathes of the nugaal, particularly the Doodi plain which has a lot of salt in it's upper layers.
At present there are little to no trees in this region. By introducing prosopis it wouldn't be displacing any indigenous species.
To build a ranch in northern Somalia it will take vision & innovation.......and a little capital.

[gurey25]

I have that dream through, when i was driving around from burco to ceerigabo.
I was like this is one hell of an empty country, there are so many places for a farm.

There are massive aquifiers all over the north, the nugaal valley alone is a competitor for those giant ones in the Sahara.
We can start drilling into the aquifiers and start using the water to ranch and farm straight away, while we slowly build the rainwater harvesting projects to recharge the aquifiers.
But the reserves are so massive we can go crazy suing them for the next 20-30 years before they run out, if we dont recharge them.

forget oil we can billions from livestock and agriculture in northern somalia, there are even excellent locations in puntland.

[original dervish]

Not only is there great aquifers in the north, there is also a subterranean river that flows from the Ethiopian highlands past Burco, through nugaal and into the Indian ocean. This river has a greater stream flow than Shabelle and Jubba combined.

A few years back while was doing field work in Spain/Andalusia, I drove through arid valley's completely covered by green houses, literally thousands of them. By using modern irrigation/growing methods, these farmers are producing colossal amounts of high value fruits and vegetables for the export market.

We have the land, water and labour freely available. All that's required is some capital and entrepreneurship.
PS Central and northern Sanaag above 1000m is perfect citrus/olive country. It has the full sunlight without the stifling heat, and the cold nights are perfect for setting fruits.

[GalliumerianSlayer]

Somalis can grow enough food to the supply the entire country and sell some to neighboring countries such as the middle east.
But they find importing things easier, this is a huge money drain.

Our lands are indeed blessed, from the abundance of seafood, Livestocks, fruits/corn/sorghum/vegetables/etc..