Feeding the Nation since 2015

Lashone Farms started in 2015. As Lashone Properties acquired land for its estates, our Group Managing Director, Dr Lanre Shonekan, saw a bigger opportunity: Nigeria's population was growing, food prices were rising and young people were leaving farming. The future, he believed, belongs to agriculture.

So we set out to farm with purpose: to contribute to food security, create jobs, empower entrepreneurs and build agricultural businesses that last. Our motto says it simply: Feeding the Nation.

On our farm in Ibarapa, Oyo State, we built an integrated farming system. At our peak we kept more than 10,000 pullets and laying birds, thousands of broilers and more than 10,000 fish, and our piggery grew from 8 pigs to 285. Our crop section grew cassava, yam, maize and vegetables, and our processing centre made garri, cassava and yam flour, frozen chicken, smoked fish and sausages.

Then came our hardest moment. When we prepared to relocate, we leased the farm to an operator for five years. Visiting two years later, we found the poultry houses empty, the cages collapsed, and pig and fish production stopped. The farm had been abandoned.

Through faith and reflection, we chose to rebuild. Working with our team on the ground, and with Dr Lanre managing from the United Kingdom, we put stronger management in place. Today Lashone Farms is bigger and more structured than before: over 30 acres, more than 5,000 laying birds, broilers, pigs, catfish and tilapia, livestock and crops. The lesson stayed with us: a business is built by its people.

We share what we know. In 2017 Lashone Farms was a proud sponsor of Lagos State's World Food Day celebrations, from the awareness walk from the Ikeja Secretariat to Alausa to the exhibition of local farm produce, and we have taken part in World Food Day events since. Lashone Business School's free School of Agriculture teaches people to start farm businesses of their own, drawing on our farm.

Our ambition is to keep growing: more poultry, fish and crops, processing that turns our produce into ready-to-use foods, and, one day, exports from Nigeria to the rest of Africa and beyond.

Our next step is online ordering through your Lashone account, so you can order, share and track deliveries from your phone.