Agriculture is key income earner for Nigeria if mechanised - Professor Ishaku Professor Mohammed Faguci Ishaku, is the Director of the Ahmadu Bello University’s Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR), Zaria. He was trained as a plant breeder and a gene
There is this clamour for changing our farming system to the mechanised type, what does mechanised farming entail?
Literally, mechanised farming entails the use of machines to execute normal agricultural production and processing activities as opposed to our traditional way of using normal implements, which is slow and with a very low capacity output. A situation where a farmer uses handheld-hoe for land preparation usually results to low yields. Also, a situation where we use human labour for planting our seeds is also a very slow process, because what a single machine can do would take more than 200 people to do in a day. Therefore, mechanised farming is the employment of machines to do what human beings are known to be doing. The advantage of that is a farmer can cut cost and then reduce reliance on human labour. This excess labour can now be channelled to other areas of production.
What would you say is the progress being made in this area of mechanised farming?
I think if progress has been made significantly you would probably not be asking me this question. In my opinion, there hasn’t been significant progress, because most of the machineries that have been at the stage of testing had to be abandoned because of the change of our economy. These machines were imported from outside, and the strength of our economy could not sustain that, most especially between the early and late 1990s. In about 10 years there have been very serious economic problems which have slowed down the utilisation and exploitation of these machineries. There hasn’t been much progress, but more and more people are recognising the importance of mechanising, because there is an increase in population and there is an increase in demand for food and for raw materials for industrial development.
Eventually, we would have to revert to the ways of mechanised farming. Mechanised farming in an organised manner that is suitable for our socio-cultural environment. We can’t say we are going to copy exactly what has taken place in North America and some parts of Europe. We would have to employ this at our own pace that would be sustainable for our development.
What are the phases that we need to follow to adapt to the mechanised system in our farming activities?
I think we would have to start with some pilot schemes. What I mean by pilot schemes is there would be scattered clusters of users of this mechanised agriculture equipment. Based on the success of these individuals, others would be motivated. People should realise that mechanised agriculture is capital intensive. It is very expensive at the onset, but gradually the cost of this investment would be subsumed by the subsequent production. Those who can afford or those in the vantage position should be able to deploy these machineries for production and processing, and they should as well be supported. The success of how they do it would transcend to other farmers.
In my opinion, the utilisation of these machineries is limited to a particular time. So, it doesn’t make economic sense for people who have very small holdings to go and invest heavily in the sector. But people who have very large hectares who own these machineries can also lease them to small farmers, and that way the cost for the low-level resource farmer would be less. If this is experimented and some modifications are made from time to time, I am sure it would come to be adapted.
Apart from the cost of machineries, what are the other problems that mechanised farming is facing in this country?
Mechanised farming is something that is technology based, and therefore it is a knowledge dependent activity so, we need users of this technology. Therefore we have to invest in knowledge and provide the technical support that would maintain these machineries. At the same time, we have to domesticate it in such a manner that we would not only be able to repair but also fabricate certain critical parts of the machines, until the day we would be able to fabricate the machine in its entirety by ourselves.
Do you think Nigeria has the expertise to start fabricating these machines?
We have. I want to believe that. What is left is for them to be channelled and motivated properly, and then they would be able to do it. The problem we have been facing is that we are struggling in-between market plant a hectare, which is about the size of a football field. But with a mechanised planter, you would do that in about 30 minutes. Therefore, the farmer is going to save time. He would have higher quality harvest at the end of the day and therefore he would end up with a very wide margin as compared to menial labour.
When you talk about mechanised farming being capital intensive, does the government have any role to play here?
Government can provide the support for interested and deserving farmers to access some funds in the form of a loan. This is not unusual because it is done in other areas like the hospitality businesses. The initial investment can be huge but with time, the business is going to pay back itself. Government should support qualified farmers to have access to funds.
Since mechanised farming is capital intensive, do you think it would be wise for government to engage directly in farming through the system?
I don’t think so. I don’t believe in government going to prepare a huge hectare of land and then use its own resources to prepare same, no. We have farmers who would be able to take care of this. Government has her own other involvements that she should take care of. However, government should prepare the ground for interested farmers to do exactly that, because it is going to be more sustainable. Government comes and changes, but once a policy is rooted in the society, irrespective of which government is around, it would be sustained. If people have a stake in something they tend to protect it better than when they feel they have nothing at stake. This kind of thing has been