Farm mechanisation: Key point for Nigerian agriculture
It is a well-established fact that Nigeria’s agricultural sector employs over 70 per cent of the total work force but despite this, Nigeria still struggles to meet food demand resulting into massive importation of food into the country.
According to a 2005 report by FAO, vast majority of work on small-holder farms in SubSaharan Africa is still done exclusively by hand or animal draught power.
With an increased concern that unless African agriculture increases labour efficiency it cannot meet future food demands, the time is now for the Nigerian government to key into ideas and strategies proffered by experts to kick-start an agricultural mechanisation revolution in the country.
Against this backdrop, small-scale farm machinery may become an increasingly viable option for raising output and productivity among smallholder farmers in the country.
Mallam Abba Ibrahim, a civil servant and medium scale integrated farmer, who is into poultry and crop production asserted that with the handdrawn machines he uses in his farming operations, he has been able to cut wastages, save cost and achieve more efficiency and yield.
Ibrahim, who has a 12ha farm in Kaduna and about 33ha in Katsina started crop farming two years ago initially employing only manual labour.
“It costs about N45, 000 to do land clearing at the farm in Tsaskiya village in Katsina because of relatively cheap labour, while it costs between N90, 000 and N130, 000 for land clearing and land preparation at the Kaduna farm,” he lamented.
In terms of planting, he estimated hired labour costs between N4, 000 and N6, 000 in Katsina while it costs N8, 000 in Kaduna.
He however noted that in terms of efficiency, hired labourers may end up not doing the right thing unlike the case of machines, where there’s more area coverage and remarkable speed.
Ibrahim affirmed that an area which can be cleared by 10 labourers in two days could be covered by the hand-held machines in a single day, at least getting nine people off your pay roll, thereby reducing the cost of labour by at least 60 per cent and efficiency of farm operations by 35per cent to 40per cent.
He revealed that;“Each hand-held weeding machine costs between 180USD to 200USD which is about N100, 000 including shipping costs, while the planting machine costs about N60, 000 with a life expectancy of 4-5 years on the average.”
Mallam Abba also highlighted that his planting machine could be configured to plant the required seeds per hole, whereas in the case of manual labour, error sets in and a lot of seeds gets wasted forcing trimming of the extra plants when they germinate.
He called on government to come up with a way of adopting semi-mechanised agriculture which would go a long way in raising productivity of the country judging from his example.
Similarly, Prof Abdullahi N. Okene, a Tillage, Machinery, Processing and Storage don at the Department of Agricultural Engineering, Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) in Zaria has stressed that because farming activities are time-bound, when a farmer to hiring of machinery, then problem.
“If there’s a tractor available for a farmer to hire at the LG level, to be paid for by the LG chairman, and they tell him the tractor is not ready at that time it has already affected his farm,” he said.
He however explained that Fadama farming is successful today because the farmers own irrigation pumps and don’t have to wait for wealthier farmers to pump water for them.
Prof Abdullahi outlined that a farmer who owns 1-2 is subjected agricultural there’s a ha of land cannot afford a tractor, but like the irrigation farmer is able to buy a pump, they will also be able to afford hand-held farm machinery if subsidised by government.
The don while urging government to engage right thinking Agricultural Engineers that have focus, confirmed that his department has been advancing agricultural mechanisation using animal draft tools, including small threshers for farmers with 5ha and above.
He however lamented that due to poor research funding, they have not been able to develop modern engine powered hand-drawn farm machinery.
“My mechanisation programme does not have up to N5m as research funds in a year, meanwhile my counterparts in Malaysia are individually getting up to N20m for research work,” he decried.
Prof Abdullahi charged government to prioritise her spending by channelling funds into sectors of the economy that are important rather than spending lump sum funds on things the country doesn’t need.
“You put billions into silos that we don’t need, if this money was channelled into research, by now all we are talking about would be history.
“Government need to realise that we have small-holder farmers in this country and begin to see how they can aid them and youth also, to continue to work in dignity,” he said.
Small machinery that would be useful to small-holder farmers is what we need in this country not hiring tractors, because timeliness is very important in agriculture, he noted.