COMMERCIAL AGRICULTURE AND AGRIBUSINESS (DETAILED)

Commercial agriculture is the modernized type of agriculture that is concerned with the large scale production of food such as
rice, beans, groundnut, maize, guinea corn, yam, cocoyam, sweet potato, cassava, wheat, banana, vegetables etc. Animals such as poultry, goat, pig, sheep, cattle, horse, fish etc. and cash crop and fruit such as cocoa, coffee, tea, cotton, kola nut, rubber, coconut, oil palm, orange, pineapple, mango cashew etc. by the farmers for sale.

In commercial agriculture, sole cropping system is practiced on large hectares of land which involves huge investment of capital for land acquisition, preparation and management, inputs, tools, implements and machinery (for land preparation, planting, weeding, harvesting, processing, storage, transportation) procurements, agro-chemicals, materials for record keeping, drainage and irrigation, hired skilled labours, improved varieties of crop and breeds of animals.

The six main types of commercial agriculture are; mixed crop and livestock, dairy farming, grain farming, livestock ranching, Mediterranean agriculture, commercial gardening and fruit plantation. The main objective of commercial agriculture which is to produce food, animals and cash crop in large quantities for sale now lead us into agribusiness which sole purpose is to make profit by effectively combining, managing all factors of agricultural production, inputs, farm machinery, processing, distribution and marketing to make sure the main aim of making optimum profit is achieved.