THE present administration has come up with the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) in a bid to earn foreign exchange from agriculture and make the nation self-sufficient in food production. But, with the continual drift of the young population of young Nigerians moving away from the rural areas to the urban in search of white collar jobs and away from the drudgery of manual farm labour, self sufficiency in food production is becoming a herculean task.
Seasonal shortage of food is becoming apparent as a result despite the fact that many labourers lack the incentive or tools to perform the high quality work needed to improve productivity. So, feeding the increasing population cannot be done with the cutlass and hoe or an agricultural system that relies on human muscles. In developed countries, mechanisation has taken over from the use of raw human power as is still the case in Nigeria.
The policy challenges of mechanisation, or lack of it, are of far reaching significance. The use of poorly-yielding varieties of planting materials even compound the problem further as crops yields across the nation have remained relatively stagnant and low over time, posing serious policy challenges that require urgent intervention. Agricultural mechanisation, embracing the use of tools, implements, and machines for a wide range of farm operations such as land preparation, planting, harvesting, on-farm processing among others, therefore becomes desirable.
There is an added dimension of soil, water and forest conservation practices that need to be built into the larger framework of environmental impact of agriculture, climate change and food security. The constraint posed by the prevailing land tenure system on mechanisation is such that agricultural lands in many parts of Nigeria are not easily made available for farming because of extant influences such as ownership structure and the stiff competition for estate development today, which is exerting dangerous influence on agriculture and the prospect of feeding the nation.
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) reckons that Nigeria is still at the early stage of agricultural mechanisation; even at that, it notes that the mechanisation of power-intensive operations has been slow. A significantly higher proportion of farming area is still cultivated by hand tools in Nigeria and West Africa compared to other developing countries
Statistics had it that, last year, a total of 3,012,360 ha of land was expected to be put under cultivation in the Nigeria with a tractor population of about 40,000 with a tractorisation density of 0.1 hp/ha. The tractorisation density of the country fell short of the recommended 1.5hp/ha by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). For Nigeria to be able to feed its growing population, therefore, there is a need for investment in mechanisation both on the part of the private and public sectors.
Dr. Ahmed Adekunle, , Special Assistant to the Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Adesina Akinwumi, said Nigeria has the lowest tractorization in the world. mechanization in the country right now is of the lowest in terms of density and intensity, “So currently what we are putting is like dropping a needle in the ocean, but we have to start from somewhere, even today, if they say they are giving us one million tractors, to mechanize the agriculture of this country right now we need a minimum of about 75,000 tractors.
For long, the public sector has been in control of tractors with little contribution from the private sector. Federal and state governments bought tractors for farmers, but most often they ended up in the government houses as public relations tools for the government. The public control of Nigeria’s tractor market by the public sector has resulted in inefficiency and market distortion as federal and state governments bought tractors and sold at subsidised rates to public agro-centres, farmers’ association and other organised buyers
Oyo State government only recently inaugurated 320 tractors to promote what it called a new and improved farming system, saying youths would be encouraged to engage in farming. “This will thereby make the sector more profitable, sustainable and technologically-driven.’’ The government said. Just like every other state that has invested in the purchase of tractors, Governor Abiola Ajimobi, said the state government purchased the tractors to meet the peculiar needs of the people, as well as to improve agriculture and develop rural communities.
Some farmers have come to see the involvement of government in the handling of tractors as not serving the needs of the farmers. Uwa Osunbor, a lady farmer based in Benin City, said it was always difficult accessing tractors from the government. “Preparing the land is what discourages people from farming,” she said.
Dr. Olufemi Faniyi, a farmer in Ogun State decried the lack of tractors in the state when he disclosed that they had to queue to make use of government tractors in the state. He lamented that “major personalities in this country have oil palm plantation in this area. You will not believe it that most of us get our machinery from Benin Republic.
“We buy machinery to crush our oil. It tells you in a simple manner how things are. The government has a tractor which you can hire. In that place, the government has just one tractor. We all have to queue to have this one tractor and it is so exorbitant. They charge about N50, 000 per hectare,” he concluded.
-Kingsley Opurum
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