LESSONS FROM MY FATHER 1- An Agropreneur and Unforgettable Good Man

My first encounter with agribusiness was from papa. I remember as a child that we had a yam barn in Effurun, the yams used to be harvested from his farm in Oria, Abraka in Ethiope East Local Government Area of Delta State. I remember how my siblings and I used to take exciting rides in trucks (Tipper or Dyna) to the farm during harvest season especially for maize. It was fun then with up to 15 of us scampering for choice positions to stand and enjoy the breeze on either the 'tipper' or 'dyna' as we drove through the country side.

I used to be fascinated by the endless expanse of green and the fragrance of fresh maize on the farm. We would all scamper round the farm plucking maize cobs from their stems. We did not know any technique but focused on getting the cobs off the stem in whole. Papa even encouraged us to eat the fresh cob...."e sweet oh eat am now" he would say. But I could never do that as a "native aje butter"(lol).

By late afternoon, we would all scamper onto the "Tipper" or "Dyna" and begin our journey back to warri with both trucks filled with our rich harvest.

The icing on the cake was when we got home and begun the corn cooking festival. Some of us will settle for the boiled maize whilst some of my adventurous brothers will try all forms of grill. At the end of the day we just feasted on corn.

We usually had enough corn that we shared amongst our friends and extended family members, the rest were then blended into pap for consumption by the family with the Saturday morning 'moin-moin'.

Some exciting memories from my agribusiness journey. More to come