About Us
MOBILISING WOMEN TO DRIVE FOOD SECURITY
& ECONOMIC DIVERSIFICATION
DIY Agric Services is a social enterprise with a mission to help smallholder farmers achieve sustainable profitability. We specialize in educating, training, and creating opportunities for women in the agricultural sector. Our mission is to engage every African woman in a ‘Do It Yourself’ approach for maximal utilization of our continent’s agricultural resources; with the twin goal of food security and economic diversification.
We recognize that women primarily bear the daily burden of ensuring daily nutritious meals for their families; and therefore, have a greater incentive to drive this twin goal that is fundamental to any serious engagement in the agricultural sector.
Sadly, statistics show that about 200 million people in Africa are experiencing acute food insecurity and many more hundreds of millions can barely afford a basic nutritious meal daily. Women bear the daily brunt of this heartbreaking reality as come what may, we must put food on the table for our children.
Most women are sadly helpless in the face of these circumstances. As a result, our strong family values are being seriously eroded with an unprecedented rise in criminality amongst teenagers, especially the alarming rise in yahoo scams and ritual killings. However, as a Yoruba adage rightly says, “When hunger is taken out of poverty, the backbone of poverty is broken.”
OUR OBJECTIVE:
Our objective is a women’s collaboration tagged that will close the gaps in domestic production for national food security within three years and maximize our continent's food export potential within five years.
Our services will position millions of our women to gain economic advantage in the food sector by facilitating their collaboration in profitable value chain (primary, secondary & tertiary) projects; locally and in exports.
We can achieve this objective in a well-coordinated three-step strategy:
i. Home Gardens
Our flagship project is a DIY (Do It Yourself) Organic Garden training to mobilize every African woman to take a front seat in procuring Affordable, Safe, Sufficient & Nutritious food for her family; and thus say No to Food Insecurity.
Each woman will be trained to grow her own food and thereby earn (or save) up to 50% of what she would have spent on monthly food expenses. She can also earn an income stream from developing her Organic Garden into a serious side hustle. Each participant will learn to cultivate VEGETABLES (Tomatoes, Pepper, Onions, Ugwu, Ewedu, Okra, Tete); TUBERS (Sweet Potatoes and Yam) and LIVESTOCK (Fish and Chicken). Also, homemade Organic Fertilizers & Pesticides to get the best yields from her Garden Farm.
ii. Community Wholesale Stores
Every participant can shop for food at their community Wholesale Arena, a Community store dedicated to sourcing food directly from producers to cut needless middlemen profiteering and making food more affordable to participants. The Wholesale Arena will also serve as a virtual shelf space to open up the community’s value-added offerings directly to the global market.
iii. Community Farm Projects
Every participant will benefit from community-based commercial agriculture projects created for women’s economic empowerment. This opportunity will help many women diversify their personal economies into agriculture and earn a secondary income.
As every woman gears up to lead this drive, by setting up her own Organic Garden and engaging in community collaboration, she can be a force for a sustainable end to hunger, malnutrition and poverty!
Our three-step strategy provides a practical approach to solving the most critical challenges causing food shortages and high prices.
These challenges include:
1. Decrease in food production during dry seasons: Most farmers are not equipped to farm with irrigation during the dry season. This is a major cause of perennial food shortages and accompanying high prices of produce, including tomatoes, peppers, onions, and leafy vegetables which typically sell for more than triple the price at certain periods of the year.
2. JHigh costs of quality inputs: The high cost and inconsistent availability of quality inputs (seeds, fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, and post-primary processing equipment) are a major cause of food shortage and high prices. Our two-step strategy includes a) teaching participants how to produce effective organic inputs (especially organic fertilizers) with low-cost locally available materials; and b) community acquisition of post-primary processing equipment.
3. Inept food-chain dynamics, inadequate processing & storage: Our strategy will go a long way to remedy the broken food chain and also drive down consumer prices resulting from needless middlemen profiteering as food goes directly to the end consumer from farmers and processors; also lowering the statistic of up to 50% post-harvest spoilage
As a woman, growing food for your daily needs also means you are helping to stem the rise in criminality and national insecurity; as well as food insecurity:
- For your family who get sufficient and nutritious food.
- For others who need to patronize the markets for the food you enjoy from your Garden Farm. The rise of Garden Farms will drive down overall demand and thus lower prices.
Our collective aspiration for the prosperity of our Continent will not materialize until we end hunger. Let’s take responsibility for change. Let us drive the DIY (Do It Yourself) Campaign and engage in immediate Massive Action to End Food Insecurity in Africa.
Charity begins at Home! Let Food Security start with you! Click to Register Now.
“Hunger debases humanity, provokes its vilest instincts and creates a social crisis that costs more to remedy than to prevent.’’