The farm notebook that pays for itself

I teach farming the way I teach algorithms: watch what actually happens, write it down, adjust. A farmer in Oyo State told me his cassava “was doing fine” until his notebook showed one plot cost twice the other for the same harvest. The difference was fertilizer timing. Paper found it in a week; memory never would have.

The one-page layout

Rule one line per planting at the top: crop, variety, date planted, plot size. Then three columns you fill as the season goes: date, what you spent, what you did. A bag of fertilizer on March 4 gets a line. A day of hired weeding gets a line. At harvest, one final line: total weight sold and price per kg.

That is the whole system. A school exercise book works. A phone note works. What fails is keeping it in your head, because by harvest you will have forgotten the March expenses, and those are exactly the ones that decide profit.

A worked example: cassava

Say you plant half a hectare of cassava in April. Stems cost ₦15,000. Two weedings at ₦8,000 each. One round of fertilizer at ₦22,000. Total in: ₦53,000. Harvest in December: 6 tonnes sold at ₦40,000 per tonne = ₦240,000. Profit before transport: ₦187,000.

Now you know your real cost per tonne (₦8,833) and you can answer the only question that matters next season: does a second fertilizer round pay? Without the notebook you are guessing. With it, you are deciding.

The same page works everywhere

A London allotment holder growing potatoes tracks the same three things: seed cost, hours spent, kilos harvested. A backyard grower in Texas tracking tomatoes learns which variety earns its water bill. The crops change; the columns don't.

Your checklist for this week

• Buy one exercise book and label it with the season and year.
• Open one page per planting, crop, variety, date, plot size at the top.
• Log every spend the day it happens, even small ones. Small ones add up fastest.
• Weigh at harvest with a bathroom scale and a sack if you must. Estimates lie.
• Do the one-line math: revenue minus recorded costs, divided by area. Compare plots.

Next in Farming: how to price at the market gate instead of accepting the first offer. And if money basics are new to you, start with my 10% savings habit, farm profit needs somewhere safe to land.