Privatising agric mechanisation, now necessity

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.

OLUYINKA ALAWODE