Carmella Natural Farms: Building white meat, healthy vegetable networks

No doubt, women-owned businesses are gaining grounds in Nigeria as they seek to set the pace for the next generation, yet building a portfolio for themselves, making good money and adding value to society. Here is one of such, Miss Hannah Rotimi-Williams, a graduate of Psychology from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and the Chief Executive Officer, Carmella Natural Farms. Her thrive in the agricultural sector is of an inspiration and impact to the younger generation. She has, in many ways, made farming and agriculture generally easy and interesting. She spoke about her organisation’s mandate, which is to build a network of white meat and healthy vegetables in order to save lives. She further stated her challenges, how they were surmounted by gaining knowledge in her sector, her intriguing success stories, as well as her opinion on how more youths and women can be engaged in agriculture. Excerpts:

I am Hannah Rotimi-Williams, founder of Carmella Natural Farms. I am a graduate of Psychology from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. I graduated in the year 2019 and I am an agric-entrepreneur. Asides from the fact that I love fashion, I am a farmer, I am into livestock farming and vegetable production, specifically rearing of rabbits for meat consumption and other purposes. I sell them as raw meat, barbecue, or as pets. What we do in Carmella Natural Farms is to build a network of white meat, rabbit meat across the country and healthy organic vegetables. We save lives because we want people to eat healthily by supplying white meat in substitute for red meat because white meat has a lot of benefits, providing healthy vegetables without the use of chemicals and making these products readily accessible for people in the community.

What spurred your interest in agriculture

Asides from the fact that I found myself in agriculture, I realised that agriculture can solve a lot of problems we are facing in Nigeria. For me, this is how to create opportunities for people, to save lives, and to add value. I decided to stick into it because I sensed that I will be meeting a major need and also with the help and words of my Pastor. I have not always been one to love agriculture. I didn’t hate it either, but after finding the need and ways that I can add value to people, I decided to stay in it.

How did you start

Everything started in my church, The Standing Church. I ventured fully into it during my national service and I saw that a lot of things were banking on this agricultural sector, I saw agriculture again as the way to eradicate poverty, solve hunger in the country, provide good health and water. I launched out through the words of my pastor, Pastor Tara Akinkuade and through this, I have had the strength to grow in the sector with my passion growing too. But asides my rabbit business, I decided to venture into crop cultivation because I was getting so much manure from my rabbit wastes. I got so many cucumber seeds from a friend, who just got back from Kenya. Prior to this, I had no knowledge on the general management of crop cultivation, but searching through the Internet, I got some useful information that helped me. And again, I had people rise for me in the sector, I had friends and older people in the sector, who were willing to teach me and groom me. I started planting cucumber and it has been going well. I used the manure from my rabbit farm as fertilizer. I will still venture into growing different types of vegetables such as cabbages, pepper, carrots, green beans and tomatoes.

What challenges have you faced and how did you surmount them

Starting from my rabbitry, one major challenge I have faced is as a result of lack of knowledge in the field. I just started doing it, so to say, as per practice. I made a lot of mistakes due to this and as at then, my rabbit farm was under the sun and this was not really good for them. I remember starting with 11 rabbits and I ended up having seven. I also did not get good breeds of rabbits and they were not producing the best that I wanted; I mean the breeds that will gain good weight in 3-4 months. The mortality rate was really bad and by December 2021, my rabbit started giving birth to young ones. These young ones also started dyeing because adult rabbits were really unsettled and I didn’t know what to do then. They would pee on them and do other sort of things. But like I said earlier, people rose up for me. I got taught and trained for no cost through the favour of God and since then, I have never lost any of my rabbits again. Asides the knowledge I was getting, I also pray and lay my hands on my rabbits, even sometimes, when some were sick and this has been working perfectly. So, I decided to fix a place of shelter for my rabbits and get better breeds and I can say that my rabbits are doing really well and I am so proud of them. This was same with the cucumber farm; knowledge was missing too and my harvest was very little. I did not stake them nor spray them. Many of them had fungi, but because I did not have any prior knowledge on that, I could not do anything as well. But at the second time of planting, having much knowledge about it, I got massive harvest that I even sold to road side stalls and I made a lot of resources. I can say that I have learnt on the job.