How to Start Farming: A beginner’s predicament
2020 has been the year of un-planned plans. By August 2020, I had lived many lives, including one life as a farmer.
There are many things a Nigerian will almost never do when they leave their village. Farming is one of them. My grandmother left her farm a long time ago because city life, albeit sedentary/boring/tiring, was better than farming her land. My mother left the farm when she left for Jos, Nigeria, choosing office work over farm work. My father left the farm for the sprawling metropolis that once was Aba, Nigeria – Aba is now the backdrop for heaps of trash, papaya trees growing in the middle of a highway and a 6-feet-deep hole in the main road. Said hole becomes a swimming pool for your car during rainy season.
Farming is seen as an old-age work; To my people, it’s retired, dirty and only for those who didn't study.
Why farm when you can do “business”, make a lot of money very fast, build a house, buy a jeep and have your own set of ‘boys’. So, no one farms and most people see farming as going backwards, or if you are educated, it’s you wasting your time. The only Nigerians still farming after leaving their villages are those who have been abroad and have seen acres and acres of land converted to palm tree plantations, rice fields or banana plantations. Those who have seen the power agriculture can bestow on a diligent nation, a community, or a home. My uncle who lives in Malaysia is the only one I know who invests in farms.
Farming is essential. How many times have you sat and thought about how your food got to the supermarket? WE ARE WHAT WE EAT and what we eat starts with how it is grown / raise / prepared.
As destiny and pure chance would have it, 2020 had farming in store for me. In May 2020, the only place I could go to was a small tiny village in Spain called “El Golco”. Spain is notorious for having mountain villages with less than 100 people. This village has about 20 people and all 20 of them know everyone and their mother’s business. You lost your dentures, your neighbor heard about it. You let your horse out at 5PM instead of 7PM, your neighbor knows it. You milked your 789th goat twice this morning, your neighbor’s sister’s husband told your daughter’s neighbor’s son. Anyways, there I was in El Golco, my favorite place in Spain, in the middle of a global pandemic with nothing to do. With all the neighbors scared to get close to you (pandemic and all), my partner and I had no one to talk to. So, we spent most of the time walking about the picturesque late-spring trails and exploring far-away hikes. One day, we happened upon the son-in-law of the goat-keeper’s wife (ha!), and told him we had nothing to do and suddenly, we were ‘interns’ on a sweet pea farm – if farms had interns, it would be us, two people with zero farming skills, and the wrong work clothes.
Farming is hard. Waking up at 7am to start a long day in the farm is incredibly difficult. I remember the first full work day – that’s 8 hours in the scorching sun, bent over, searching for and picking out sweet peas through a bush of weed and leaves. I ached all over. My back hurt so much I couldn’t pick anything up that fell on the ground. My hands were throbbing. My knees were sore. I was so exhausted that the only thing I could do was sleep. The farmers reassure you of course. They tell you that the more you do it, the quicker your body adapts to the movements. If my mother knew that I was farming, she would have ask me to reconsider my marriage. Some days after farming, we went with the goat herder to walk the herd (see some pictures here).
My body never fully adapted but my mind did. We got into the rhythm of farming and picking the peas. My mind settled into the act. Being able to take home a handful of peas to eat for dinner that I farmed and picked from the plant, took on a whole new meaning. I had never been so close to where my food comes from. I had never thought about the process of food as much as I did during those days as a farmer.
Then we started preparing for tomato season – tending to the cherry tomatoes. In order to be sold, cherry tomatoes have to be the cherry perfect size. To get the tomato to the cherry size, you have to tend to the plant every day, removing perfectly good leaves and stunting the growth of the plant. Next, we racked the roots to support water absorption. And when the plant does not grow as quickly or evenly as expected, the farmers add chemicals to stimulate it. They have to.
When it is time to sell the products, another (potentially uniquely Spanish) problem occurs. All products are weighed and a third-party decides the price for each box of product EVERY DAY. Today a box of peas is $3, tomorrow $2.10, next tomorrow $2.60. It changes every day based on an arbitrary decision by the higher-ups who control the amount of product in the market. That is, pay less for the tomatoes, limit the amount of cherry tomatoes you see in the market, you pay more, they earn more – meanwhile there are cherry tomatoes in the farm rotting. At one point during our stay, we tried to start an association for the farmers. Surely with an association, they would have more say. But it turns out, there is a strong lobby against the union of agriculturists. So much so that after a full day of strike in the cities of Andalucía, they all went back to work – and almost no one heard about it.
Living and working as an agriculturist made me appreciate the food I eat. The people who grow our food are some of the most important people in our lives, not the politicians, not the businessmen, not the celebrities and their voices are never heard.
Everyone should farm. Without Agriculturists who work the land every single day, we would have nothing to eat. Yet they are some of the most marginalized groups in our human society. Who wants to grow up to be a Farmer? The answer should be all of us or at least all of us should appreciate the work done to make sure we have the juicy sweet pea soup or those cherry tomatoes on a Greek salad. As a farmer in El Golco, I learned so much about plants, the earth, water, manure and the chemicals that make our fruits look extra perfect in the supermarket. I knew I couldn’t stay in the village to farm, so I bought a small Basil plant for my kitchen window with the plans to expand my own garden when I have more space.