Technological Feats of Agricultural Engineers in
Nigeria III
Weeding operation is one of the most tedious operation
compared to other farm operations. This is why weeding is unattractive to many
people especially the youths because of drudgery. Agricultural Engineers have
made tremendous effort in developing animal drawn mechanical weeders. Two examples are suffice; IAR Animal Drawn Straddle Row Weeder and EMCOT
Rotary Weeder with capacities of
weeding a quarter of hectare per an hour
each. Obviously, the target of this weeding technology is small and medium
scales farmers who constitute more than 80% of the farming population.
Harvest is the proceeding operation after weeding.
Harvest of farm produce is equally important and tedious when done manually.
Inefficient and untimely harvest can result to produce loss to as much as 30 to
45 %. Harvest is a high labour operation because of the need to do it timely.
The development of crop harvesters have brought about a remarkable reduction in
the drudgery, labour requirement and production cost of crops. In Nigeria, Agricultural
Engineers have developed harvesters for all crops; cereal, legumes, fruits and
tubers, respectively. Examples of this
feat are scattered in some Universities, Polytechnics, Research centres and few
local fabricators across the nation. In Federal University of Technology,
Akure, Prof. R. O. Akinbamowo and his colleagues designed and fabricated a
tractor – mounted harvester for cocoyam using locally available materials.
Field tests were conducted to evaluate the performance of the machine. The overall
performance of the machine was the successfully harvesting of mass of tubers
with negligible number of tuber damages. Akinbamowo's was published by Australian Journal of
Agricultural Engineering of 2011 (vol. 2 no. 3). Another outstanding work was
that of Dr. A. O. Ojomo, M. O. Ale and O. G. Olajide of Rufus Giwa Polytechnic
Owo, who developed a cowpea harvester. The harvester was designed, constructed
and evaluated for its performance. The machine was fabricated with high carbon
steel with an output capacity of 120kg/h. The overall performance of the
harvester exhibited the highest functional efficiency of 93.75%, quality
performance efficiency of 81.21%, field loss of 3.4% and shattered loss of
6.66%. The harvester was found to be statically and dynamically stable and thus
was able to withstand vibration. This innovation was similarly published in
Vol. 5 no. 10 of Asian Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Engineering is a global profession, solutions are
globally sought to address local problems. Thus, the solution to harvest of oil
palm fruits was sought from Germany-based manufacturers C. Woermann Nig. Limited
who used the relevant engineering and agronomic data of oil palms for the successful development of adjustable
harvester for mechanized Harvesting of Palm Oil in Nigeria. The problem of palm
oil harvesting is enormous is best captured by Mr. Samuel Fadare,
a researcher at Self-Help and Rural Development Association (SHERDA),
Niger Delta, Nigeria. He stated “I was involved in carrying out PIND’s palm oil
scoping study, and we discovered that one of the major constraints of oil palm
industry in Nigeria is harvesting of palm trees’ fresh-fruit bunches (FFB), 50%
of FFB are wasted for want of climbers and the cost involved. That’s why this
technology is important, because it can reduce the drudgery involved in
harvesting. Presently, all our processing and milling equipment are
underutilized because of the tough period; right now, the mills are at 40%
in-store capacity. It’s not that we don’t have FFB, but getting them harvested
quickly and processed and in store is a problem”. This is why the introduction
of oil palm harvester received tremendous applause from the stakeholders. The
demonstration of the Nigerian initiative, German manufactured harvester was
done at the National Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR) in Benin City, Edo
State, on January 28th, 2014. The occasion
saw the result of the linkages between Foundation for Partnership
Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND), German agro-technology firm and palm oil
sector stakeholders to improve the efficiency of not just harvesting of palm
fruits, but of the palm oil sector as a whole. The event was witnessed by 187
participants from various stakeholders.
Threshing operation is followed after harvest. There
are several threshers of most of agricultural crops produced in all the
Agro-geological zones of Nigeria. These threshers are designed and fabricated
by Agricultural Engineers for the use of Nigerian farmers and elsewhere. The most
recent feat in threshing technology is achieved by Institute for Agricultural
Research (IAR) based in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The breakthrough of IAR
is the transformation of its complex and low capacity Multi-Crop Thresher to
simple, robust, efficient and high capacity machine. The new prototype machine
specifically designed to thresh sorghum, millet and soybean can also shell
maize making it more versatile and cost effective for farmers and hire service
operators. The machine performance in terms of output capacity, threshing and
cleaning efficiencies are 410 kg/h, 99.6 % and 98.4 % for sorghum; 472 kg/h,
99.3 % and 94.9 % for millet; and 200 kg/h, 100 % and 89 % for soybean,
respectively. This machine is unique when compared with other available
machines that can only thresh effectively one or maximum of two crops with lots
of grain damage and waste. The losses due to visible grain damage and scatter
loss for this machine are 3 % and 4.2 % for sorghum; 0.01 % and 10.5 % for
millet; and 0.01% and 4.2 % for soybean, respectively. Development is still
ongoing to improve the machine performance and also
include other crops such as wheat and rice.
One can continue to mention
innovations and breakthroughs achieved by Agricultural Engineers in the last
four decades without exhaustive them. However, there are few other technologies
developed by Agricultural Engineers and they are equally important to humanity
that need to be mentioned in this article. one of them is Manually
operated Duplex Piston Pump developed by
Engr Mansir Abubakar of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. A manually operated
duplex piston pump has been constructed from locally available materials. The
pump is operated by a single individual and could discharge up to
20liter/minute of water from a suction head of up to 2.5m to a delivery head of
1.5 m. The pump is gear driven through a handle. The driven gear drives a crank
mechanism that ensures that when one piston is sucking the other delivers
water. The two suction pipes from the cylinders are joined to a common pipe
that goes to the Well. Similarly, the two delivery pipes are joined to a common
delivery pipe for discharge. Hence there is a relatively a smooth flow of
water from the pumps as there is a continuous flow from each revolution of the
lever. In its present state the pump could be operated by a person above 15 years. With little modification in the drive
mechanism it can be
operated by children between the
ages of 8 to 15 years. There was equally another innovation developed by the same
Engineer; Engr M. S. Abubakar; it is "One-liter Squat Flush Toilet" . This is a toilet that
needs just about a liter of water to flush down the solid waste of an adult.
A 60 liter water tank supported at an elevation ensures gravity flow of
water through a metering mechanism to a one liter container. It uses
self weight of users to open or close a toilet –collecting mechanism. It is
simply operated by pressing down a pedal with a leg (or 2 legs) when the user
is in a squatting position. The pressed pedals actuate a mechanism which
opens a sealed inlet for the stool.
After the user has finished easing himself, all he needs to do is to pull a
rope which will deliver one liter of water over the stool down a slanted evacuation pipe. By
lifting his leg from the pedal the user automatically releases the mechanism
which will now close the sealed inlet for the stool and thereby blocking any odours coming from the evacuation pipe.
The evacuation pipe is connected to longer pipes which empty their contents in
the septic tank by gravity flow. The toilet is suitable for public uses where
the distance from the toilet to the septic tank is not more than 5m.
These are few of the achievements recorded and
it is evident that Nigeria is blessed with human resources. Most of these
achievements were made by young engineers, some of them as trainees or
"baby engineers". I have deliberately refused to mention the feats
achieved by our well experienced Engineers; "grandfather" engineers
such as Profs. Makanjola, Odigbo, Lasisi, Lucas, Igbeka, Oni, Talabi, Faborode,
Adewumi, Abubakar, Ajayi, Adekoya, Drs. Bindir, Musa, Engr Azogu and many
others too numerous to mention. These are Engineers of international refutes
and thank God, they are still alive; perhaps retired but not tired. The
question is "despite these achievements, significant number of Nigerians
are not aware of these achievements and very few users are accessible to such
technologies, why?". The answer to this question can be searched by the
stakeholders with the active facilitation of our Honorable Ministers of
Agriculture, Science and Technology and Water Resources. For us to benefit from
the mantra of change, it is important to create effective linkage between
innovators and users. Honourable Ministers, the ball is court.
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