By Fatima Muraina

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Get a farmland

You can acquire, rent or lease your farmland. It is pretty easy and cheap to get farmland in rural areas of Nigeria.

Beans or cowpea can be cultivated in all regions of Nigeria.

Soil Preparation

Cowpeas grow well in good soil that is fairly loose. This crop does not do well in compact soil. Cowpea can grow in poor soils. This is one of the advantages of cultivating this crop.

You will need to remove the weeds. A tractor with plough can be used to bury the weeds in the soil. The buried weeds can improve the quality of the soil.

The soil should be harrowed after ploughing, then a ridge or bed should be done on the soil.

Get the right seeds

You should use good beans seeds. Do not buy beans seeds from the open market, patronise only accredited seeds dealers.

Hybrid seeds are usually higher yielding than open pollinated seeds. They also resist a lot of diseases and pests.

Get farm inputs needed

Your beans farm needs farm inputs like fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides and nematicides. To plant beans, the type of fertilizers needed should have high phosphatic content. Examples are Single Super Phosphate (SSP) fertiliser or Diammonium Phosphate (DAP).

Manage the farm

Do not rely on your unskilled members of staff as they can be funny. Make sure that all your instructions are fully carried out.

Harvest

Sow cowpea varieties have a short growth time. There are 40 days variety and also 100 days variety. The creeping variety has a longer duration time and higher yield. The erect type has a short duration but a slightly lower yield.

You should harvest when the pods are dry and slightly brownish in colour.

 Market the harvested beans

After harvesting, you can store your beans for a while and sell when the prices peak. The prices of beans in Nigeria peaks around March – April every year.