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Cluster FarmingFarming for the future
Empower people to grow food everywhere
The farm of the future must be able to do three things; feed people, protect the environ-ment and earn a healthy return on investment. As pioneers of the new agriculture revolution, Cluster Farming begins by confronting the notions that profitable farms must be large (500 Ha+), level valuable rainforest, move people from their ancestral land and must depend on the Western export market. However, this style of farming has been proven to provide di-minishing returns and create various social problems that are felt for generations yet born.
The African landscape is characterised by a diverse range of farming systems. These relate not only to varied geographical environments, but also to different social and cultural stand-ards for farming and food production. This diversity is unique and can be preserved, in con-trast to large scale monoculture farms, through the Cluster Farming model.
Cluster Farming created an organic Hub farm and breeding station in Ekumfi Ekrawfo, Ghana on 40 Acres. The Hub farm consists of a nursery, animal breeding station and a fish hatchery. Firstly it delivers high quality livestock and vegetable seedlings to the Satellite farms. Secondly it serves as a training centre and model farm.
Cluster Farming focuses on strengthening in agribusiness and aims to contribute to sus-tainable productivity, income improvement, increased education and training and compre-hensive service level agreements of the Hub Farm.
Cluster Farming is the solution to empower people to grow food everywhere through a self-sufficient farming model. In the broad sense Cluster Farming facilitates new national and international collaborations between local farmers and their villages, entrepreneurs, investors and financial institutions, governments, development organisations and academic institutions.
You are more than welcome to visit our Cluster farm to see the progress we already made.
Gerrit Anton Valkenburg CEO
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Join Cluster Farming....
It is never too late to start something new, something different, something better It is never too late for new challenges in agriculture. Start today together with us by building a new future in Cluster Farming.
Consider this: There are currently more bus drivers in Africa than professional farmers. Which is more likely to happen first? A bus driver who needs to eat, or a farmer who needs a bus ticket? Food ranks in the upper echelon of human needs right besides water, oxygen and sleep. The planet needs nutritious food and that requires thoughtful intelligent people to grow it.
.... if you are prepared for the challenges
Important to know is that a Cluster Farm is the result of intensive consultation between the initiator / foundations and Cluster Farming. Through experience we rely on a blueprint, but everything can be modularly adapted to the different needs and wishes.
Cluster Farming will set up 10 Hub Farms including Satellite Farms over a period of 5 years.
Cluster Farming locates a suitable area in collaboration with the village. Subsequently we take care of the formalities to secure the land, to obtain the permits and licences necessary to operate the farm and to be compliant with tax laws and other obligations. Cluster Farm-ing supplies the farm inputs, trains the local workers for the farm and delivers farm man-agers. Finally we purchase the products of the cluster farm and market them through our existing network, in the local and African market.
What is Aquaponics?
Aquaponics combines traditional aquacul-ture with hydroponics in a symbiotic envi-ronment; simply raising fish and plants in and on water!
Aquaponics solves the two problems of disposing of fish excreta and fertilizing hy-droponic water by making the waste from one process the food for another. Since the only input to the system is fish food and a small amount of water, it is highly sustain-able. A benefit of this system is that our products are organic, as we use a mini-mum of pesticides and chemicals.
Comparison between two growing methodsCrop (No. of harvest a year using hydro-ponics)
Yield using soil (tons per hec-tare at harvest time)
Yield using hy-droponics (tons per hectare at harvest time)
Lettuce (10) 52 300 - 330Tomato (2) 80 - 100 350 - 400
Cucumber (3) 10 - 30 700 - 800Carrot 15 – 20 55 – 75Beetroot 56 105Potato 20 – 40 120Peppers (3) 20 – 30 85 – 105Cabbage (3) 20 – 40 180 – 190
Source: Hydroponics Manual, IICA, 2010
100% Organic
The small ecological ‘footprint’ and cost reducing factor is impressive. The design allows crops to acquire sufficient amounts of water, light, nutrients, CO2 and oxy-gen at all times. The result is beautiful and healthy crops with a superior taste. The crops are free from all dirt like weeds, soil, etc..., which guarantees a clean crop with a longer shelf life. Dry Hydroponics is such a clean approach to growing crops that they can be sold immediately and are ready-to-eat.
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“End misery in our life time? It’s possible”
Aquaponics: minimal input, maximal output
The goal of Aquaponics is achieving the maximum output with a minimal input, regardless the type of land, climate and location; enabling farmers to optimise fast cycling vegetable cultivation. This model is profitable, ecological and sustainable.
bright and dry
nutrient and oxygen-rich
insulating layer
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Chili peppers, the Ghanaian pride
Ghanaian chili peppers always had and have a good reputation in Europe and other foreign markets. The advantages of chili pepper cultivation in Ghana are plenty and have already been proven in reality many times. Ghana’s competitive advantages over other African chili peppers producers are its proximity to the inter alia EU and South Africa for fresh produce and cheaper airfreight costs. Together with Agri-Africa, a leading South Afri-can agricultural consultancy company focusing on Sub-Sahara Africa, Cluster Farming is inspired by and picking up where the Millennium Development Authority stopped in 2012. By introducing the Bird’s Eye Malaga variety, the farm an-swers to the still growing worldwide demand for Chili. Foreign buyers have already shown interest in buying the entire harvest of Ekrawfo Hub Farm.
Agri-Africa is a network of agricultural consultants and practi-tioners operating in the interlocking fields of business, agricul-ture and agro-political policy.
Competence, experience and credibility: three key traits of ef-fective and insightful consultancy - traits offered by Agri-Africa through its synergetic network of agribusiness professionals, many of whom are nationally or internationally recognized as leaders in their respective fields.
World leading expertise
The hydro culture system is advised and delivered by a world leader in dry hydroponics systems, the Dutch Cultivation Sys-tems. Their patented system can be defined as clean, reliable and sustainable. The design allows crops to acquire sufficient amounts of water, light, nutrients, CO2 and oxygen at all times. The result is beautiful and healthy crops with a superior taste. Crops are free from all dirt like weeds, soil, etc., which guar-antees a clean crop with a longer shelf life. Dry Hydroponics is such a clean approach to growing crops that they can be sealed immediately and are ready-to-eat.
Nunhems, a division of world leader Bayer CropScience, delivers seed varieties for test research on new and resistant crops. The crops that are best adapted to the local conditions are selected for commercial use on the farm. In order to capture a solid posi-tion on the market it is important to have this unique knowledge in-house. This is a tremendous advantage over the competition, in particular with regard to the introduction of new crops.
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Hatchery and fish breeding
The farm holds its own hatchery for the production of fry and the breeding of fish fingerlings. Fishponds are foreseen to enhance the capacity up to a few hundreds of thousands of fish.
The Hatchery can hatch up to 1,500,000 catfish and 2,000,000 Tilapia. The hatchery, which supplies the fish for the aquaponics system, enables the farm to breed new vari-eties of catfish meeting the local and international demand for quality. These new species help reducing the pressure on natural marine and local fish populations.
Making a difference
An imperative element in Aquaponics is the nutritional value of the crops. By rearing catfish, tilapia, snails and cane rats alongside with the Aquaponics vegetables, the farm targets a diversified offer of cash generating products.
PUM Netherlands senior experts, well represented in Gha-na, delivers specialized consultancy and an intensive training course for local farmers into insemination and fish breeding techniques. Catfish is an easy to breed fish with the right char-acteristics and with an excellent nutritive and economic value, allowing a catfish hatchery spin off.
Animal Breeding
Snailery & apiary The snail pavilion has a usable maximum surface of 500 square meters, able to hold 5,000 snails.
The Apiary is 500 square meters and holds 25 colonies of bees, producing nearly 400 kg of honey with a margin to expand to five times this amount.
LivestockIn Phase 3 livestock such as grasscutters, chickens and pigs will be added as an extension to the integrated model. The manure of the livestock will be used as fertilizer and sold to farmers.
Sustainable, cultivated, extremely fresh, healthy and accessible to many. It has a delicious mild taste, is ten-der, has a firm structure and is easy to prepare. Claresse® catfish, is a speciality in itself but is also an excel-lent sustainable replacement for over-fished whitefish sorts.
Examples of new cross-breeding hybrids on the market today: Claresse® catfish recommended as sustainable species by the WWF.
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Adding value
Cash crop nursery The nursery not only decreases the cost of the own seedling stock but also generates an extra income through the sales of nursery products to third parties.
Composting unit Our farm is built with waste as an as-set. While many value added products can be created from our compost, we want to ensure that our nursery has the best soil.
Processing Facility In order to have the highest qual-ity of products it will be ensured that they are harvested and stored within a temperature controlled environment. Next to this the farm workers will be trained to meet international process-ing standards.
Agro forest Agro forestry combines agricultural and forestry technologies to create more productive, profitable, healthy and sustainable land-use systems be-sides diverse products like papaya and mango.
Value added productsIn Phase 3 the production of value added products will generate a new cash flow by producing organic dried chilies, smoked catfish, honey and fish food.
Ekrawfo Hub FarmSite plan
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Phase 1: Preparation• Business plan & feasibility studies• Finance agreement• Establishment of a new Satellite Farm
Phase 2: Start up• Farm construction• Recruitment of local labour• Training local labour at the Hub farm• Village will enter into a facilitation
agreement with the Hub farm
Phase 3: Production• Introduction of live stock• Start up commercial production• Production sales agreement between
Village and the Hub farm
Phase 4: Sales of produce• Exploration of the market• Increasing production volumes
Building a Cluster Farm
Phase 5:Replication of the model
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Together with specialized consultancy firms the most suitable land, crops and agricultural techniques were selected and an overall research was conducted. The most important distinctive features of this model are:
1. Market: The most rewarding strategy is to focus first on the local market and surrounding countries. Most ECOWAS-countries and especially Ghana are fast growing economies with rapidly growing middle classes.
2. Price: In the applied pricing model not only the market price but also the ‘com-petitive advantage’ is an important fac-tor. An additional advantage of the African market are the relative high market prices in relation to the production cost for cer-tain products like lettuce and catfish.
3. Product: The model mainly focuses on cash crops, with a strong local and/or in-ternational demand, able to generate high output volumes with low inputs. Cutting edge techniques and highly specialized ag-ricultural consultancy enables us to opti-mise the cultivation of local crops and in-troduce new crops.
4. Diversification: The big advantage of a diversified and integrated farming model is the resistance against fluctuating mar-ket prices and crop or breed imperfections. This risk mitigation ensures a successful long term return.
5. Operating cost: In the integrated farm-ing model the operational cost is greatly reduced. The Aquaponics system ahead, has already proven worldwide to be one of the most efficient farming techniques. The other elements in the farming model are conceived within the same philosophy, resulting in a very cost efficient and sus-tainable model.
6. Competitiveness: The first Cluster Farming model is the result of two years of research and hard work. Several univer-sities, organizations, specialists and com-panies were consulted to achieve the best possible result. By applying cutting edge farming techniques and renown special-ized consultants the farm operates with a considerable technical advantage towards local competitors. Knowledge, hard work and seeding capital made this possible.
7. By replicating the first Hub farm, Clus-ter Farming will get a strong pole position in the implementation of new agricultur-al standards for the intra-African market, Cluster Farming will be the leader.
With the start of the first Hub Farm in Central region, Clus-ter Farming, will take the lead
“An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory”
True socio commercial development
Creating true sustainability is linking all aspects of the farm so that output is maxi-mized and input is minimized. The solution has already been thought of by the ancient Chinese and Inca people in the 6th cen-tury, with aquaponics as central element. The Cluster Farming working method is based on the principles written out by the European Initiative for Sustainable Devel-opment in Agriculture (EISA).
Cluster Farming is creating true prof-it. Several small holder farms connected with a central Hub farm are a solid entity capable to share benefits as well as bur-dens. With an increasing population, rising household income and a growing urbaniza-tion in Ghana, Africa and many parts of the world, opportunities are emerging for the farming industry; not only on the exist-ing retail market but also to supply hotels, hospitals, supermarkets, restaurants and fast food chains. These institutional buy-ers need more vegetables and fish for their menus and are looking for more reliable suppliers who can give them a constant supply at a good price while maintaining good quality.
With increasing competition from imported products, domestic producers are unable
to meet the demand, the quality specifica-tions or to supply the institutional market at a competitive price. As more than 90% of farmers in Ghana cultivate less than 2 hectares, they must collaborate to consoli-date their produce.
Cluster Farming will be part of the solu-tion for many developing countries around the world.
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Economic and social impact
First stage impact in the villages directly involved in Cluster Farming: The Com-munity Action Fund puts aside extra funds, based on a part of the net profits for social development, new infrastructure and new utilities in the farm communities.
• Jobs for the villagers• Long term employment• Ongoing training and education at in-
ternational standards• Market access for local suppliers
Additionally Cluster Farming will gener-ate the same effect in nearby villages, cre-ating local trade and development. Each farm generates a new economic backbone for an entire region and is a positive contri-bution to Ghana’s trading balance.
Second stage impact occurs when the farms reach cruising speed. The continu-ously economic activity becomes a catalyst for a multiplicity of small businesses like restaurants, bars, shops, etc.
This strong network of commercial and so-cial activities is the base for long-term sus-tainable development in the region.
The Cluster Farming model scatters economic activity over the entire re-gion and generates strong economic centres in local villages. This reduces the pressure on the main economic centres. The overall misery is greatly reduced by keeping the traditional lo-cal social structures in place and by ensuring local youth employment and development.
“A successful multiplication of this farming model will breathe new life into the local economy and above all em-power people to grow food everywhere”
Central Region
N
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Key Assumptions
Fish breeding
By using similar techniques as pro-fessional catfish breeders in The Netherlands, the stocking density is very high. Only by using powerful recirculation systems these densi-ties can be obtained. The crucial ele-ments are the water quality and the cycle length. Within 6 months the catfish reaches a market weight of 1-1.2 kilograms. The food con-version ratio is crucial and will be met by using initially professional fish feed of renown brands.
Catfish production in Ghana is still not at the level of other similar coun-tries and the introduction of the Claresse® variety as a sustainable and exquisite fish will offer new opportunities on the local mar-ket.
Characteristic Assumed valuesStocking density 3.00 KG/m³Initial weight of catfish stocked FryValue of catfish fingerlings 0.25 $/#Survival at harvest 0,40Cycle length 24.00 weeksHarvest weight catfish 1.00 KG/#Yield-live catfish 240.00 KG/m³Yield-live catfish 459,432 KG/FarmFCR (Feed Conversion Ratio) 4.00Cost of supplementary feed / diet 0.30 $/KGOther assumptionsArea 25 HaTotal pond area 4,387 m²Pond cost 11,881 $Land cost 5.00 $/m²Number of ponds in Ha per farm 39Month days 30 daysBatch cycle length 6 monthsAverage annual temperature 25 °CAverage pond depth 0,80 m
Assumptions and key figuresInitial investment
Preparation and construction of the Cluster Farming
Farm start up• Research and feasibility studies• Land purchase and registration costs• All construction costs: materials, labour cost, sub=contractors• Administration and legal costs• Management and labour costs• Farm facilities • Machinery costs• Feed• Livestock and seeds
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Aquaponics
The aquaponics system not only generates a significant return for the farm but also acts as a bio filter for the fish farm. With the current setup a yearly production of 352,180 heads of lettuce is targeted.
Obviously many fast cycling crops can be grown on water but these are subject of market demand and return per square metre. The lead time on water is the crucial factor. For lettuce it is 4 to 6 weeks, ensuring 8 to 10 cycles a year.
Chili cultivation
The chilies are grown initially on 10 hectares but can be up scaled to 25 hectares. Calculations and prepara-tions are foreseen on 10 hectares of the Bird’s Eye Malaga variety.
With an average yield of 5.5 metric ton per Ha, two times a year and a life span of 3 years, this is a solid cash crop.
Lettuce Area m² Plantable area 2,074 Net area 1,825
Production #/year Start density 28 End density 14 Production cycle (days) 35
Production / day 460 Number days / week 5
HarvestHarvest / hour / man 100 Transplant 300 Seeding 400 Growspeed / man / hour 1,250 Hours per year 1,750 Production per man / year 105,000 Cost per / year 2,211 Labour cost per # 0.021
Production Production per man / year 352,180 Production per m² / year 193
Chili Area m² Farm 10,000 Variety Malaga
ProductionDensity / m² 4 Plants / Ha 50,000 Production cycle (days) 183
HarvestYield (Ton / Ha) Yield (Ton/Ha) Harvest (months / batch) Harvest (months/batch)
ProductionProduction per man / year 352,180 Production per m² / year 193 Production / m² 22
