Soilless Farms Labs is building a new model for Nigerian agriculture

Samson Ogbole grows lettuce in coconut husks.

Not because he’s trying to be clever, but because soil in Nigeria is unpredictable. Too much potassium here, not enough nitrogen there. Plant in the wrong spot and you’re guessing what’s already in the ground before you add your first fertiliser. With coco peat and rice husk mixed together in greenhouse troughs, he knows exactly what goes in. Three grams of potassium for baby lettuce. Two grams of nitrogen. Timed irrigation that delivers 2,000 litres across precise intervals. No surprises.

Five years ago, Ogbole started Soilless Farm Lab in Awowo, Ogun State, with a thesis that sounded almost insulting in a country with abundant arable land: farming works better without soil. Today, the company runs 800 greenhouses across 36 hectares, employs over 100 people (70% under 35), and has trained 13,000 young Nigerians in hydroponic and aeroponic agriculture. The operation includes a 23,000-ton processing plant that turns fresh vegetables into powdered spices, a retail outlet in Lekki, and export certifications that let them ship frozen produce internationally.

It’s not glamorous. Nobody writes thinkpieces about better ginger powder or optimised irrigation schedules. But Soilless Farm Lab stumbled into something that Nigerian agritech mostly ignores: the problem isn’t finding farmers or digitising supply chains. It’s that nobody wants to farm because farming looks like backbreaking work for elderly people in rural areas with no money to show for it.

Making farming not look like farming

“Agriculture has been seen over time as something for the elderly, for the poor, and for the dirty people,” says Peace Okwara, the company’s farm manager. “So you don’t see young people coming into it.”

This isn’t new insight. Everyone knows Nigeria’s average farmer is 53, and the country faces food insecurity despite massive agricultural potential. The usual fix involves apps, logistics platforms, and aggregator marketplaces—tech solutions for distribution bottlenecks. Soilless Farm Lab took a different angle: what if the problem is that farming itself is unappealing?

The company started with “work and learn” during COVID. Come train for free, work for free. No tuition, no salary, but you learn greenhouse construction, IoT-driven monitoring systems, drone technology for pesticide spraying, and precision agriculture where every input is measured. The model worked because it looked nothing like traditional farming. Young people showed up.

It evolved into the Enterprise for Youth in Agriculture program, backed by Mastercard Foundation, where trainees build their own farms during training. “After they finish, they have farms that they can now manage, and it is theirs as long as they keep managing it,” Okwara explains. The program maintains a two-thirds female quota and trains 1,000 people every three months.

The pitch is simple: farming can be a structured business with predictable outcomes, not a gamble on weather and soil quality. Trainees work with hybrid seeds that come with yield projections—”if you’re using this seed, you get a certain amount of kg per plant, so you can calculate.” They learn substrate farming where coco peat retains water and rice husk allows aeration, creating a controlled medium that acts like soil without the variability. The irrigation systems run on timers. The greenhouses protect crops from heavy rainfall and wind.

“Farming is no longer seen as a dirty job,” Okwara says. “Young people are interested because they can (now) see the  sexiness of doing agriculture.”

Growing on demand

Soilless Farm Lab doesn’t plant first and look for buyers. Customers—restaurants, hotels, supermarkets—sign agreements specifying crops, quantities, and delivery schedules, and the company plants accordingly. It’s contract farming… stripped of romance.

The processing arm runs on the same model. Clients either bring their produce or ask Soilless Farm Lab to source it, then specify packaging or powder requirements. “You come in, say what you want, and there’s an agreement,” Okwara explains. White-labeled ginger or turmeric products go out the other end.

Fish farming and poultry came later, driven by customer demand. The Lekki outlet handles direct retail, but beyond Lagos and Ogun, expansion makes little sense. “We don’t encourage far distribution,” Okwara says. “Transport costs kill small B2C orders. Port Harcourt for one pack of ginger powder doesn’t work.”

Over time, the company’s focus on processing grew into something bigger. What began as a way to extend the shelf life of vegetables has evolved into a full-scale production line: taking raw crops through to finished, packaged goods in-house. Now, the goal is to turn those powders and dehydrated vegetables into familiar brands on supermarket shelves across Nigeria and beyond. The focus, Okwara says, is on deepening market reach rather than raising new capital.

Getting the basics of modern agriculture right

In 2023, Ogbole joined Cascador, a Nigerian accelerator that helped tighten Soilless Farm Lab’s operations. Funding wasn’t the issue — the greenhouses were up and running. What the company needed was structure: how to present itself in a market where educated urban consumers increasingly value both quality and packaging, how to adjust packaging for formal retail channels that account for a small but growing share of food sales, and how to implement formal sales processes to reach these segments effectively.

Before Cascador, they sold produce the usual way: lay it on shelves and hope someone buys. 

“Coming into the program was more about structure and operational alignment,” Okwara explains. Cascador helped redesign materials, formalise buyer agreements, and define packaging and positioning for different customer segments. Supermarkets required different packaging than local markets, and premium buyers expected higher-quality presentation.

It may not be the glamorous side of agritech, but for a company running both farming and processing operations, these operational details are what make the business work.

The honest truth is: Soilless Farm Lab won’t solve Nigeria’s food security crisis. “We alone cannot feed the whole country,” Okwara admits. 

With 30.6 million people already experiencing acute food stress and Lagos’s projected food demand set to reach ₦7.96 trillion ($5,445,937,400) annually by 2030, the company supplies only a few percent of the city’s needs. Its impact comes from scale through replication—the 13,000 people they’ve trained, each capable of running their own systems.

Hydroponic setups still cost around ₦2 million ($5,500) for a small greenhouse, which prices out most people. The business works better in the southwest, where infrastructure is stronger. Expansion beyond that gets complicated. And despite Okwara’s confidence about their 800 greenhouses being “the largest in West Africa,” players like MyFoodAngels are developing similar networks and production facilities.

But Soilless Farm Lab proves that agriculture in Nigeria can operate like any modern business: precise inputs, documented processes, predictable yields, and structured sales. “Farming is becoming more business-oriented,” Okwara says, with proper documentation and record-keeping making it easier to run at scale.