What are land requirements?
Land requirements refer to the amount of land that is required to farm commercial amounts of a commodity. Some crops or animals require more or fewer amounts of land. Crops and animals that require little space to farm commercially have minimum land requirements. They are the subject of this article.
Why should you choose a farm with minimum land requirements?
A farm with a minimum land requirement helps the investor to cut the costs of buying or leasing large tracts of land. With the ever-rising costs of land, you should explore agribusiness ideas that only utilize small parcels of land, yet assure you of high profitability.
With the increasing population in Africa, land ownership is shrinking. Land subdivision means that smaller and smaller portions of land will be available for farming. Suiting your operations to this state of affairs would be a step in the right direction.
How we determine our top farms with minimum land requirements
We determine our top farms with minimum land requirements on the basis of the following factors;
Average space requirement of a crop or animal
Growth patterns of a crop in the field
The type of housing required for the animal
Top 5 farms with minimum land requirements
1. Rabbit farm
Rabbits are reared in hutches or small cages which are raised from the ground. It is possible to make a multi-storeyed hutch that can house many rabbits. One adult rabbit has an average space requirement of 12 square feet. With these dimensions, even ⅛ an acre of land can accommodate a high-capacity rabbit hutch.
Since rabbits are not very high feeders in terms of volumes of feeds, ⅛ an acre of land can be used to construct a hutch and still leave some room for planting vegetation consumed by rabbits. Of all livestock, rabbits are therefore the animals with the least space requirements.
2. Mushroom farm
Mushroom is a premium commodity that can be farmed on a very small piece of land. Despite this, mushroom is very productive and can even outweigh the production in tonnage for many other crops.
An ⅛ of an acre of land can be used to produce up to 2 tonnes of mushrooms. If maize was planted on a similar size of land, the production would not exceed 300 kg regardless of variety. On top of that, the shelf frame method of farming mushrooms only takes 2 months to produce up to 2 tonnes of mushrooms.
3. Strawberry farm
Strawberry is also another crop that has very minimum land requirements. With only ⅛ an acre of land, one can easily set up a strawberry farm. One acre of the strawberry crop can produce up to 8 tonnes of the fruit if good management measures are put in place.
At a farm gate price of $2 per kilogram, one can make revenues of $16,000 per acre per growing season. Most farmers however get between 3 to 4 tonnes per acre, making between $6000 to $8000. Still, strawberry is a very lucrative crop even with an average harvest.
4. Bee farm
Beekeeping is another venture that requires a very small amount of land to start. An ⅛ an acre of land can hold more than 25 beehives. In beekeeping, 25 beehives may be considered to be a medium-scale, and in some instances, largescale if all the hives are highly producing.
It is easy to practice large-scale beekeeping because the labor involved is not high like in other ventures. Bees do not require to be fed like livestock. They seek their own food and water and they protect their own hive. Not only will you be utilizing a very small amount of land but also spending very little to run the entire operation.
Learn more about beekeeping opportunities in Africa.
Rearing layers under the battery cage system requires very little space when compared to the barn system. Battery cages represent an effective use of space where vertical space in a chicken house is utilized well.
While only one large chicken house can be constructed on ⅛ an acre piece of land, the battery cages can be used to increase its capacity by up to 5 times. In the traditional sense, rearing chicken may require large spaces, using the battery cage qualifies the venture to be on our list of farm ideas with minimum land requirements.
Learn more about layers farming opportunities in Africa.
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