By Sefakor Fekpe, chicken story company
Some Ghanaian entrepreneurs are embracing snail farming, tapping into its potential as a worthwhile agricultural enterprise.
Ama Serwaa Ennin squats in a greenhouse, proudly displaying her farm produce. What she holds is a supply of satisfaction and a promise of future earnings. Opposite to the grain, legumes, or beans usually featured in tales of African agricultural success, what she cradles in her fingers are snails – particularly, big African snails.
“One commentator requested me why I do that when my friends are leaving for Canada to practise nursing,” the younger farmer, who has documented her journey on social media, stated.
The reply is straightforward. “They’re probably the most worthwhile animals per sq. metre,” defined Felix Appiah Nyarko, co-founder of Trisolace, an enterprise that helps smallholder farmers like Ennin develop snails organically in city and rural areas.
Snails are a delicacy and supply of protein for Ghanaians. Well-liked Ghanaian dishes like jollof rice with snails, banku with snail stew, yam chips with peppered snails, snail meat pies, and snail meat kebab could be present in eateries in most city areas within the nation. They’ve change into an enormous alternative for farmers.
Over the past eight years, Nyarko has helped Trisolace set up greater than 200 giant greenhouses devoted to rising snails throughout the nation.
“The greenhouse bundle prices between 36,000 cedis (about US$3,000) to 200,000 cedis (about US$17,000) and the small bins begin from 700 cedis (about US$58) whereas a pack of snails is 150 cedis (about US$12.5),” Nyarko defined, outlining the enterprise’s pricing construction.
Snail farming was about as removed from Ennin’s preliminary plans for a profession as one might get. Nonetheless, after qualifying for her dream job in nursing, she waited in useless to be positioned in one of many nation’s medical centres.
“I realised that I wouldn’t be posted anytime quickly after nationwide service as a result of our predecessors (had been) nonetheless at dwelling and I made a decision to do one thing and the chance I had right here was land, so I began farming,” she stated.
In 2022, Ennin’s father instructed her about snail farming. Quickly after, she travelled for coaching on the Trisolace snail farm in Accra, then began her mission on her dad and mom’ land within the Ashanti area.
“I market the snails on-line and purchase from native pickers, and promote to the open market whereas ready for these within the greenhouse to completely mature,” she defined.
Ennin’s dad and mom helped her with the acquisition of her first greenhouse, which price her some 24,000 cedis (US$2,000). There, she grows greens like carrots, cabbage, lettuce, and cucumber. Whereas she sells a few of her harvest, most is used to feed round 1,700 edible big African snails.
“It’s good to have endurance as a result of it’s a long-term funding … Snail farming doesn’t want a lot house. You possibly can undergo the coaching and begin small, not essentially the greenhouse technique,” Ennin stated.
The idea of business snail farming struck Trisolace’s Nyarko whereas job searching, a time when he encountered pals and fellow civil engineering graduates additionally struggling to search out employment. Nyarko participated in several start-ups and entrepreneurship programmes and noticed the large potential the snail trade offered by way of job creation.
“We began with small bins stuffed with snails and gave them out to pals and colleagues the place they reported on what they like and don’t like, in addition to the mortality charges, in order that was how we acquired our analysis,” Nyarko stated.
With financial savings from his nationwide service allowance and help from his co-founder, they raised 5,000 cedis to start out rearing the snails on a business scale, utilizing bins.
“In 2018, we began on a bigger scale doing the greenhouses. This was after I accomplished intensive coaching at a state-owned establishment, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Analysis, Forest Analysis Institute of Ghana (CSIR-FORIG) on snail farming expertise.”
Their snail rearing was catching on and in 2019, Nyarko was awarded a US$5,000 grant by the United Nations Growth Programme (UNDP) and the Nationwide Youth Authority (NYA) beneath Ghana’s Youth Connekt platform.
Trisolace has grown over the previous seven years to now have 22 full-time workers, thanks partly to the appliance of various revolutionary strategies, like utilizing greenhouses and sprinklers.
“We noticed that there have been a variety of prospects in agriculture. However we didn’t have a spot of our personal. I used to be nonetheless with my dad and mom so that you couldn’t do something like poultry or something that smelled or made noise. That’s after we began to analysis snails,” Nyarko defined.
Snail farming nonetheless has its challenges and dangers, together with a comparatively excessive mortality fee throughout hatching if situations will not be carefully monitored.
Nonetheless, retired Ghanaian technician Elvis E. Nkrumah, who beforehand specialised in snail farming expertise, advises younger folks to have endurance and guarantee finest practices to change into worthwhile over time.
“We advise that you just don’t promote your first-generation however the second-generation so that you’ve got a sequence of ranges the place you may promote the next years and that may make them sufficiently big to earn you increased costs so that you just get a variety of revenue. Your first technology will get you a variety of snail inhabitants. They lay loads – on common, 400-500 eggs yearly – and hatchability is between 95% to 100%,” Nkrumah famous.
One other underexplored space within the worth chain is the rising demand for snail slime by the beauty trade globally.
“Lots of people are creating curiosity within the sector not due to the flesh however due to the beauty trade. Few folks in Ghana extract snail slime and export however a variety of them promote recent meat. The profitability is sort of excessive, particularly within the dry season once they’re scarce,” Nkrumah added.
“We will meet solely 18% of the full market demand, therefore the explanation we’re providing free coaching as a way to get extra folks to spend money on the sector,” stated Nyarko.
/chicken story company