Privatising agric mechanisation- best for Nigeria’s future

Services in agricultural businesses are time-bound. When a farmer books for a tractor and expects it to be delivered on a certain day and it is not delivered for several days, it can hamper the farming business for that year. Such has been the experience of farmers with most agricultural equipment hiring services run by government agencies and departments.

In some states, the equipment either lies wasted in the yard or they are converted to private uses by civil servants who do not care that majority of farmers that the tractors are meant for either do not get timely access to them or no access at all.

Appealing to the consciousnesses of civil servants is evidently not the way forward, but the various levels of government simply need to take pragmatic steps- hand over agric mechanisation services to the private sector. This is the views of industry watchers.

Richard Hargrave, managing director, Dizengoff affirmed recently in Lagos that privatisation of agric mechanisation services is the best way forward. Many industry watchers also attest to this, some urging a Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement for some of the enterprises. Hargrave said, “The opening up of tractor hiring centres – a good example is in Niger state where they are renting out on a per day basis. This would grow and this is one of the solutions. They (the equipment hiring enterprise) buy the tractors. We (Dizengoff) supply the tractors, do the training, do repairs and maintenance. They have taken about 11 tractors and they are taking more, it is growing. They enter into an agreement with Niger state under a PPP on where they would locate the hubs.”

But noting that many state governments are financially challenged, Hargrave said, “Unfortunately, at the moment, the state themselves cannot even pay their own workers. So, there is a challenge on how to find investment capital to move on from a subsistent farming culture in its entirety to modern farming. This is where the rest of the world is prepared to help – the World Bank, UK DFID, they are prepared to bring funding to genuine mechanisation schemes, finding interrelated partnerships that are right.”

Hargrave urged the need for different parts of the agricultural value chain to come together in actualising this. “When the different parts of the chain come together and there is little government participation in the day-to-day running, there would be greater impact. Another is that the cooperatives are becoming more organised, so they have a critical mass in terms of land, so they can use the machineries across the cooperative farms,” Hargrave said.

Temitope Adewole, graduate of crop protection and environmental biology and owner of Simeon Farms – a crop farming business, also proffers this simple solution, he says, “The government is trying when it comes to hiring of farm equipment but the procedure it takes before it gets to the farmer is tiring. If government could give out the equipment at subsidised rates to young farmers like my association to run an agricultural equipment hiring service, there would be so many advantages which include:

•The equipment will get to the farmers on time

•It will be quick to generate income for the government

•It will create employment opportunities for the private hands handling the hiring services.

•It will be well managed and maintained.

To ease his access to mechanisation farming, Adewole and five other farmers with separate farming businesses had to jointly purchase a tractor with support from a Fadama project under the Youth Commercial Agriculture Development (YCAD) in Ekiti state.

For maintenance of the tractor, the association hires it out when not in use on their own farms, and the young farmers, all graduates are able to earn extra income. Adewole said he hopes to get more equipment to hire out.

Last year, former minister of agriculture and rural development, Akinwumi Adesina now president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), also pointed out this way forward.

Speaking during the flag-off of the Agricultural Equipment Hiring Enterprises in Abuja, Adesina said the level of mechanisation of the agriculture sector was still very low and that the high cost of land clearing is a major disincentive for the expansion of cultivated area, especially in the southern parts of the country due to the dense vegetation; while the high cost of mechanisation, from plowing to harvesting, pose great challenges to farmers across the country.

He stated further, “A farmer with access to a tractor will be able to plant 10 hectares per day, compared to just one hectare per day if the same operation is being done manually with hoes and cutlasses with human labour. Harvesting with cutlasses or sickles is not efficient, and leads to high losses from harvest and post harvest operations.

The number of tractors per 100 square kilometers in Nigeria is less than 10, compared to over 728 in the UK, 257 in the USA, 200 in India, 130 in Brazil, 200 and 125 in the Philippines. Therefore productivity per area of land and productivity for labour in the agriculture sector of these countries are much higher than in Nigeria. Nigeria must, as a matter of national priority and urgency, fully mechanise the agricultural sector.”

He emphatically said, “We must aggressively privatise the commercialisation of agricultural machineries in Nigeria.”

He then explained, “I wish to state clearly that the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development no longer buys and distributes tractors, as has been the practice for decades. The ministry now supports the private sector to drive the mechanisation of Nigeria’s agriculture. What you are witnessing here today is the establishment of what we call Agricultural Equipment Hiring Enterprises (AEHEs), driven by the private sector. They will provide access to affordable agricultural mechanisation services for farmers.

One can only imagine: if our farmers could produce an additional 21 million MT of food between 2012 and 2014, without tractors or mechanised equipments, they will definitely feed the world if they have a fully mechanised agricultural system. Together with our network of silos we will secure our food supply and those of other African countries.”

OLUYINKA ALAWODE