Lagos Agrinnovation Summit 2.0 Revealed the Future of Farming in Lagos

On a warm morning in Victoria Island, the Harbour Point Hall filled slowly but purposefully as young agripreneurs, investors, policymakers, and farmers settled into their seats. There was no mistaking the mood; this summit wasn’t about repeating the usual slogans about agriculture, it was about redefining it.

When one of the panellists, Baliquees, joked during her session that there were no young people on the panel and that she was the youngest person there, the audience burst into laughter. Although beneath the humour was an important truth: the people who should be driving the future of Lagos’ food systems are young, bold, and unafraid to speak plainly.

What unfolded throughout the day was not just a celebration of awards. However, those came later, but an honest exploration of ideas, struggles, and breakthroughs shaping real farms, real businesses, and real markets.

How Food Shocks Pushed Ordinary People Into Farming

The hall quieted when Ife Ariyo, CEO of Forth Worth Farms, shared the moment her farming journey began. She described the 2007–2008 food crisis, when market shelves were bare and inflation ran wild.

“We didn’t have access to food in the market. My husband wanted wildlife pets. I said, ‘If only we had animals we could eat.’ One day, I came home to five day-old chicks behind the house,” she explained. Those five chicks grew into a farm that now manages over 250,000 birds, supplying thousands of households in Lagos State.

Her story illustrated a truth many in the room understood: Nigerians often enter agriculture not by choice, but by necessity, and then innovate out of survival.

Why Nigeria Still Struggles With Basic Foods

Tony Jibuno, an engineer-turned-dairy farmer, brought the conversation around to Nigeria’s self-sufficiency problem. He recalled meeting a foreign founder producing a snack made from pig skin. The man processed 160,000 pigs a day, transforming them into a hundred-million-dollar enterprise.

He asked if Nigeria could supply pigs. The man said yes, but when Tony returned to Nigeria, he found out that Nigeria had no farm capable of meeting even a fraction of the demand, either in volume or quality.

From there came the line that stayed with the audience: Milk is white crude.

Tony explained that Nigeria imports billions of naira worth of dairy annually, while local cattle arrive in Lagos too stressed and underfed to produce profitable quantities of milk. His dairy farm in Oyo now houses approximately 350 animals, aiming to reduce Lagos’ reliance on imported dairy. Barn Holding Group is planning a multi-billion-naira livestock and dairy farm in Abia State, under a PPP (public‑private partnership) with the state government. According to reports, the project aims to create over 20,000 jobs. The development also includes a cattle ranch, a feedlot, and a disease‑control & traceability hub. Part of its plan is also a training and demonstration centre for modern livestock management.

The Business Nobody Talks About

Ife Ariyo returned later in the session with an insight that had several farmers in the room nodding.

Most farms, she said, obsess about what they sell—eggs, fish, meat—but ignore the goldmine in their waste streams. If they focused on the waste produced on their farms, they would discover new profit.

At Forth Worth Farms, for example, poultry waste is used to feed crops, processing waste becomes fish feed and customer deposits fund production cycles.

This model stabilises cash flow, reduces cost, and creates multiple revenue streams. Then she told a truth many small farmers understood immediately:

“We don’t supply the big supermarkets. Our cash cows are hundreds of market women buying five crates each,” she added to break the myth that growth only comes from big contracts. 

Competing on Price Instead of Value

Olagoke Balogun, the CEO of SoFresh, Nigeria’s leading healthy-food chain, brought a different angle: branding and consumer psychology. He shared how SoFresh built trust from day one by using a completely transparent open kitchen, allowing customers to watch how their meals were prepared.

“You will never win by competing on price. Focus on value,” he advises.

He gave an example that perfectly illustrated this. SoFresh launched a tuna salad. Lagos ignored it. Then they created a sweet and spicy chicken salad, a flavour profile Nigerians actually wanted. “Within two months, it accounted for 50% of all sales,” Balogun revealed. He left the audience with a key message: packaging, hygiene, storytelling, and consistent quality matter as much as production.

The Farm That Became a Destination: Agro-Tourism’s Untapped Potential

To emphasise the importance of tapping into Nigeria’s Agro-tourism potential, one panellist described his introduction to a sprawling 1,750-hectare farm in Oyo. It features a river, a dam, and a landscape so serene that he joked that visitors would pay just to breathe the air.

He quickly realised the land could offer far more than primary production. Farm stays, tours, educational experiences, farm-to-table dining, and adventure activities are all possible alongside food production.

“The current farmers are on their way out. The youth must take over, or Nigeria will be shocked,” he affirmed.

Agro-tourism, he argued, could give young people a way to love the land without the back-breaking labour that deterred previous generations.

Climate Action In Farming

A climate activist-turned-farmer, Baliquees Balaudeen, shared why she left advocacy for practice.

“I didn’t want to keep asking for climate action from world leaders. Why not take the lead ourselves?” she asks.

She and her husband launched Green Republic Farms, starting with three acres and growing to fifteen. Their approach was simple; they focused on climate-smart farming, localised production to reduce transport emissions, youth inclusion, and ecological soil management.

Despite conceding that there were several challenges, her message highlighted the next frontier in agriculture: innovation with climate responsibility mixed in.

During the fireside session, government representatives broke down the structural issues farmers had been raising all day.

Farmers lack security and guaranteed buyers, that’s why banks won’t lend, one of them said.

To address this, a Lagos State representative highlighted several solutions that the administration is working on:

• Produce for Lagos, which provides a structured market for vegetables, poultry, fish, and dairy
• Offtake guarantees that give farmers confidence and lenders assurance
• Green logistics, like the Ecolove electric trucks
• Agrinnovation Club, which links youth to mentors, funding, and global partners
• Cluster-based production to reduce cost and increase bargaining power

“It’s an end-to-end solution so everyone in the agri-food space can find their market,” an official stated.

What This Summit Revealed About the Future of Farming

From all the sessions, a few big truths emerged clearly:

1. Young people are entering agriculture for survival and staying because of opportunity. Their creativity is reshaping the poultry, dairy, fisheries, produce processing, and even tourism industries.

2. Farmers succeed when infrastructure works, not when speeches are made. Cold chain, logistics, offtake guarantees, and access to market women matter more than big announcements.

3. Value is the new currency. Branding, hygiene, storytelling, and customer insight all contribute to profitability.

4. Waste is wealth as circular systems reduce cost and create multiple income streams.

5. Climate-smart innovation is no longer optional. Youth farmers are redefining agriculture through sustainability.

6. Lagos is building a system, not just awarding grants. The state's policies aim to make farming bankable, predictable, and attractive.

A Summit That Showed the Real Conversations Behind Food Security

Agrinnovation Summit 2.0 wasn’t about applause or photo ops. It was about farmers, founders, and policymakers speaking with uncommon clarity about what truly works.

If you were not in the room, this is what you would have felt: honesty, urgency, innovation, creativity, and possibility.

The real story of Lagos’ agricultural future is not the money awarded, but the minds shaping the food system from the ground up. And on that day in Victoria Island, their voices were impossible to ignore.