Farm Mechanization Trend in Nigeria: Indigenous - Quasi Efforts and Challenges II

Seed Cum Fertilizer Broadcaster was indigenously fabricated by the Engineers in MAGLANDS Creations for use as seeds broadcaster and fertilizer applicator. These operations are seemingly simple to do manually but extremely difficult to achieve uniform distribution of the fertilizer and seeds. The resultant effects; neither the plant population is optimum nor the plant growth is uniform for the crops planted on the same day and on the same farm land. Obtaining lower yield of crops is often the consequence of Hand or manual broadcasting of seeds and fertilizer. The indigenous Broadcaster is designed to be mounted across the shoulder of an operator by means of a strap. A hand-crank rotates the spreading disc. Seeds or fertilizer are placed in the hopper. The size of the delivery aperture provided in the bottom of the hopper is adjusted to apply the recommended quantity of the seeds or fertilizer per unit area. As the hand crank is rotated and the person moves forward; the material is spread uniformly over a 5-6 m radius. This machine is suitable for rice, wheat and grass/hay productions. The performance features of the machine are application rate ranged from 40kg/hr to 62.4kg/hr, carrying capacity from 6.5kg to 10kg, Field capacity from  0.54 to 0.72ha/hr and Labour requirements to 1.38 to 1.84man-hr/ha.

Serrated Weeding hoe is another indigenous innovation to assist farmers. Weed control is an indispensable operation in the crop production system otherwise the weeds will share the soil nutrients with your crops.  Weeds are serious menace to crops as they compete with the plants for water and light in addition to the nutrients, harbour insects, pests, diseases and reduce the quality and yield of the crop. One of the most widely and traditionally used methods of weed eradication in standing crops is the use of hoes. The main advantage of using the serrated Weeding Hoe is the elimination of back-ache usually encountered with the local hoe. This is because of its short-handle which causes the farmer to bend in a bent posture. Besides, less effort is required to use the improved hoe due to superior grade of steel material used for the blade which aids in maintaining a sharp cutting edge of the blade. Depending upon the soil, crop and weed conditions, it was found that a person could weed a piece of farm land area from 0.02 to 0.04 ha/hr. This the labour requirements could vary from 22 to 40 man hrs/ha, which means that a person can weed twice or trice the same area he could do with the traditional hoe and less drudgery.

Fabrication of Wheel hoe is another feat targeted at small scale farmers. The wheel hoe is widely used to effectively control weeds. The wheel hoe is essentially an inter-row cultivator. It is used by pushing and pulling action. The stroke length is adjusted by the operator depending upon his arm length and ease of working. The depth of penetration is adjusted by raising or lowering the wheel with the help of the holes provided on the frame. The work output for an average person ranged from 0.03 to 0.05ha/hr. It is an improvement over serrated weeding hoe.

Fabrication of Agricultural processing machineries were among the indigenous efforts to address post harvest losses and improve the quality of agricultural produce. Rice Paddy Parboiler is one of such processing equipment. Traditional method of rice perboiling has led to poor quality and making consumers to have preference for the imported rice. The Parboiler is designed to soak the paddy in water, heat and steam it over a specified period of time. This leads to partial boiling of the grains and galvanizing of the starch in the rice. The process keeps the quality of cooked parboiled rice better as it can be kept for longer duration without decomposition or moulding. The Parboiler can parboil 70kg of paddy in about 4 hours. This operation can be repeated 2 to 3 times a day which means a paddy of 140 to 210 kg can be parboiled each day. A bigger parboiler with higher capacity up to 2 Tons of paddy rice was also developed, The perboiler can meet the needs of small scale rice processor with relatively small investment.

MAGLANDS Creations is not alone in this race of promoting indigenous and quasi - indigenous technologies for transforming our traditional farming practices to modern and efficient ones. Recently, Ahmadu Bello University Consultancy Company Nig Limited (ABUCONS) has made a giant step towards this direction. ABUCONS is the business outfit of Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. The aim of ABUCONS is to provide technical, professional and other expert services to all tiers of government and private sectors. This is done through the involvement of academic staff who undertake research projects of immediate relevance to the country, thus leading to mutually beneficial relationship between teaching, research and practice. The firm depends mainly on the widespread talents available at the university to execute consultancy projects. This means that ABUCONS has a pooled of intellectual manpower with more than 2,000 academic eggheads in over 100 academic programmes of the university. In a dramatic move to provide a lasting solution to low  level of agricultural mechanization in the country, ABUCONS has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Qicheng Engineering and Machinery Company Ltd, Hong Kong China for a joint venture. The joint venture is aimed at manufacturing, importation and assembly small scale, affordable and quality agricultural machineries, implements and equipment. The venture is ensuring that the researchers and scientists of the two companies share their expertise and experience with researchers and academics of Ahmadu Bello University and the nation in general.  The venture is likely to facilitate and promote technology transfer, expertise in manufacturing, fabrication, multi-purpose engineering machinery, tools and spare parts  between the two countries (China and Nigeria). Already, some of the hanging and dangling fruits of this venture are being plugged. 

 Samples of the joint venture's products are hand - held rice reaper, small scale rice milling machine, multi - crops thresher, small scale combined rice de-stoning and milling machine, groundnut harvester, planting/transplanting machines, and many others. These machines are mainly for small scale farmers, targeted at Nigerian peasant farmers across the five ecological regions of the country. As stated in the MoU, these products have to be of high quality, affordable, available spare parts and trained manpower for repairs and maintenance. This is certainly a good news for our small scale farmers who have been toiling on their farms over the years with insignificant rewards for their labour.

  MAGLANDS Creations and ABUCONS are not the only private and governmental organizations working tirelessly to promote indigenous improved farming tools and machineries. National Centre for Agricultural Mechanization (NCAM) Ilorin, many  Engineering faculties/schools in our tertiary institution of learning and multiple research centres across the nation have pockets of success stories on the development and testing of farm machineries. Despite these efforts, however, there are few insignificant impacts on our agricultural mechanization due to some challenges.

The first challenge to farm mechanization in Nigeria is lack of coherent and consistent government policy on agricultural mechanization. To the best of my knowledge, there is no separate National policy on Agricultural Mechanization, however under Agricultural policy there is narrow outline on how  Government intends to promote Agricultural Mechanization. This must squarely be addressed through involvement of relevant stakeholders especially, Nigerian Institution of Agricultural Engineers (NIAE), Nigerian Agricultural Society (NAS) and Association of Practicing farmers of Nigeria (APFAN) among others.

Another challenge is inadequate funding for research and development, research funds in the annual Federal government budgets are placed under capital projects, yet, the capital projects are hardly released; in the last five years, the releases were at best 50% of the approved budget and were never timely. In agricultural research work, "time" is an important variable under investigation and when untimely fund release make a researcher slow down, the research result will certainly be affected. The next challenge is preference for imported goods by our elites who are mostly responsible for our massive importations of all goods and services into the country. Government has to patronize made in Nigeria goods and its policy to promote these practices.

These are few of the challenges militating against the successful promotion of the indigenous farm mechanization in the country. The earlier the government lead in addressing them, the better for our country and we may begin to see light when government shows commitment. The road to food security for a nation has never been  a smooth one.  

Farm Mechanization Trend in Nigeria: Indigenous - Quasi Efforts and Challenges

Farm Mechanization Trend in Nigeria: Indigenous - Quasi Efforts and Challenges

Nigeria with teeming population, vast land and favourable climate cannot produce enough food to feed the population. The reason for this abnormality is  that more than 70% of the farmers in Nigeria use hand tools for their various farm operations. Use of hand tools like hoe and cutlass is laborious, tiring, time consuming and highly inefficient method of food production. Example, it will take a 5 - man day for a highly experienced, hardworking, healthy and energetic man to weed one hectare of farm land while it take only one man - day to perform the same task with animal drawn implement.  When using a tractor (60 -75 horse power), it take one hour twenty minutes to perform the same task. Again, with hand tools, on the average, a man can produce food to meet dieting requirements for maximum of five people in a year. Under the same condition, with farm machinery, a man can produce enough food for more than 300 people in a year. This is why mechanization is absolutely necessary for a nation to achieve self sufficiency in food production. What is farm mechanization?

Farm mechanization is simply the replacement of hoe, other hand tools, and draught animals with tractors and other mechanically or electrically powered machinery and implements.  Mechanization allows previously unutilized land to be brought under cultivation. This may be the result of the ability of tractors to perform deep tillage of hard soils as well as reclaim wasteland. It could also come about by bringing additional land under cultivation. Mechanization results in timelier field operations with increased productivity. Timeliness is essential for multiple cropping systems as is the case in Nigeria. Thus, there is need for timely land preparation between sequential crops, especially in irrigated agriculture. Similarly, Tractors and animal traction are not only useful for land preparation, but can also be used to power implements and equipment for other farm operations and maintenance of rural infrastructure. The same equipment also can be used for transporting produce to the market, as well as driving pumps and grain milling equipment. Mechanization can overcome seasonal shortages of labour or release labour in critical periods for other productive tasks. If labour is released for the production of other crops, total farm output should increase; for non-farm activities, overall household income should increase.

Another important benefit of Mechanization is reduction of the drudgery associated with farm work, especially for power intensive operations such as tilling the land with a hand hoe. This is particularly important in many rural areas of Nigeria where high temperatures and humidity render farm work relying on human muscle power to be ergonomically quite difficult and arduous. Our low level of mechanization is the reason making youths to shy away from the farm operations and prefer to look for white colour jobs in urban areas. As a result, the youths who should be the next generation of farmers perceive farming as a world of drudgery for losers and thus, avoid it.

Generally, a farmer in Nigeria is seen as "a man with the hoe" in spite of decades of huge investments made in agricultural sector by the government and international agencies. Recent statistics show that Nigeria is one of the least mechanized farming countries in the world, the average farm power input in Nigeria is 0.27 horse power per hectare which is far below the recommendation of 1.5 horse power per hectare by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nation. To clearly see the picture, one should refer to the World Bank report of 2012. In the report, Nigeria had an average of 7 tractors for every 100 square km  of arable land compared to 100, 1,900 and 64,000 tractors in Algeria, Ghana and South Africa  for the same square km.

Today, most developed countries have moved from total reliance on human power to using tractors and implements. There is no doubt that mechanization is a compulsory ingredient for boosting agricultural production and an unavoidable key to the realization of the food security in Nigeria. In addition to improving production efficiency, mechanization encourages large scale production and improves the quality of farm produce.

Nevertheless, despite numerous advantages, mechanization has some disadvantages such as displacement of unskilled farm labor, causes environmental pollution, deforestation and soil erosion. The major disadvantage of mechanization in Nigeria is high cost of acquisition. Prices of tractor and implements are expensive for example, a 65- horse power tractor without implements costs between 6 and 8  million Naira, which is beyond the affordability of an average farmer.  Again, introduction of high level mechanization may have little advantage in subsistence farming as predominantly the case in Nigeria. This is because it doesn’t provide sufficient cash income to pay for the equipment. Equipment such as tractors which may be put to other tasks to keep it as fully occupied as possible could have been encouraged but it is very difficult to find sufficient work at all times to occupy it fully throughout the year. Some people have not seen any value attempting to mechanize the actual cultural operation of these pockets – sized fragmented land holdings, confined as they are in narrow strips. The average land holding of farm in Nigeria is about 0.4 hectare per farmer. This is why promotion of high level mechanization (tractorization) faces herculean task to achieve in the country.

No doubt, over the years, governments at states and federal levels have invested billions of Naira in importation of tractors and implements with little success in mechanizing Nigerian agriculture. Professor Isaac N. Itodo, in his Lead Paper presented at 2013 NIAE conference in Uyo, stated "Tractors have been bought year after year yet the mechanization of our smallholder farms has remained dominated by the hoe-cutlass technology. Why is this so? The reason is that these smallholder farmers have not found it profitable to increase the size of their holdings using these tractors. What sense does it make to increase the size of area ploughed when there are no planters, boom sprayers and harvesters for the subsequent operations to guarantee timeliness of operation in a rain-fed agriculture? Increasing the size of ploughed fields without the capacity to hire the required workers to plant, weed and harvest on time has resulted in unforgivable losses to the farmers. The mechanization of our smallholder farms will thrive if government provides a mix of farm machinery to famers. The farm size will increase with a commensurate increase in output". This is partly responsible for farmers inability to increase the percentage of cultivated land area beyond the 40 % of 85 million hectares of arable land in the country. So, what is the way forward?

The way forward is the development, promotion and adoption of improved indigenous technologies that are suitable to our farming system. The technologies have to be efficient for peasantry farming and affordable to the generality of farmers. Some patriotic Nigerians are making efforts in this direction. MAGLANDS CREATIONS, an indigenous private engineering company is one of the such organizations involved in promoting the indigenous technologies suitable for small scale farmers. 

As a modest contribution to the progress of farm mechanization in Nigeria, the Engineers in MAGLANDS CREATIONS, have embarked in the fabrication/ production of workable and adoptable farm equipment such as Stick Planter for seeds, Serrated Weeding Hoe, Wheel Hoe, Seed Cum Fertilizer Broadcaster, Single Row Seed Planter, Multipurpose Seed drill, Rice Paddy Parboiler, Groundnut Stripper and Cassava Lifter/Harvester. The company is located in Ibadan, Oyo state.

The stick planter is an improvement to the direct manual planting. In traditional planting, the person carries the seeds in one hand and the traditional hoe in the other hand and has to bend down to plant. This practice is slow, tiresome and causes drudgery. The stick planter helps to prevent that. The stick planter is held in the right hand and the seeds to be planted in the left hand. It has a mechanism for planting the seeds and covering up while keeping the operator in standing posture. It is suitable for planting maize, Soya beans, cowpea, Groundnuts, Guinea corn, cotton, etc. It is suitability for light and medium soils. The planter has field capacity of 0.028ha/hr and average of 30 man-hour per hectare. A higher version of stick planter produced by the company is a Single Row Seed Planter. This is a complete machine with a Hopper of 3 kg  capacity. It has mechanism for seed metering, furrow opening, planting and covering as the operator pushes it along the row. The single row planter can be used to plant various seeds such as maize, soya, rice, wheat, cotton and cowpea. Each crop has seed metering device suitable for the crop. The inter-row planter distance is adjustable depending on the agronomic requirements. The estimated field capacity is 1.076 ha/hr and labour requirement of 0.93 man-hr/ha (Continue next week) click to download newspaper version in PDF format

Readers' Comments on Educational Feats Of Nigerians in Diaspora: Food For Thought

Reactions to my 3-series article on the "Educational Feats of Nigeria in Diaspora" are not going away. The issues discussed in the article were challenges on Nigerian educational system. The reactions show  the sensitivity of education in the mind of Nigerians. The system has a sarcastic outcome and this was satirically captured by one of respected elites as reported in a social media. He was quoted saying  "Nigerian educational system has surprising outcomes. The smartest students pass with First Class and get admitted to Medical and Engineering Schools. The Second Class students get MBAs and LLBs to manage the First Class students. The Third Class students enter politics and rule both the First and Second Class students. The Failures enter the Underworld of crime and control the politicians and businesses. And best of all, those who did not attend school become Prophets and Imams and everyone follows them. What a paradox of life. This can only happen in Nigeria where corruption is the order of the day." Well, well, this is why I think no time or space is too much for us to deliberate on our educational system. The discussion may give us lessons, direction and perhaps, may lead us to find the solutions to the decay of the system. Happy reading

Educational Feats of Nigeria in Diaspora: Food for Thoughts

Dear Dr. Othman,

Thanks for your article published on Friday, 17th June, 2016. the article is timely and very relevant to the current deterioration of the educational situation in the country. The situation requires present administration to create favorable learning environment by providing modern learning facilities, good motivation and right leadership in our institutions (primary, secondary and tertiary). Kudos to Governor of Kaduna State Malam El-rufai towards this direction. We heard him sending thirty female students to study medicine in Uganda and recently planning to send one hundred and fifty male students to study medicine and other science courses in Cuba and Germany. That is an example of right and good leadership.

 Engr. Adamu Arab, Ph.D Fellow and Extension Specialist, NAERLS, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.

Dear M. K. Othman

Thanks for your highly informative article on the  "Educational Feats of Nigerians in Diaspora: Food for Thoughts" published in Leadership Friday. To buttress the problems you highlighted in the 3-series article, I have come across the global ranking of university and it  so  sad that no Nigerian University or higher institutions of learning made it in the list of 2016 top 1000 Universities in the World. This is the result of near total collapse of the Nigerian education system.  Permit me to share this information released by Centre for World University Rankings (CWUR).

The CWUR has released its 2016 Top 1000 Universities in the world and placed Harvard University, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, all in the United States, in the top three positions, respectively. The University of Cambridge and University of Oxford, both in United Kingdom, came 4th and 5th respectively, as University of Witwatersand, South Africa (176th) ranked first in Africa. Others were University of Cape Town (265th), Stellenbosch University (329th), University of KwaZulu-Natal (468th) and the University of Pretoria (697th), all in South Africa, and Makerere University in Uganda also clinched the 846th position in the ranking. Four Egyptian Universities also represented Africa on the list, they are: Cairo University (771st), Ain Shams University (960th), Mansoura University (985th), and Alexandria University (995th). According to CWUR website, there are eight objective and robust indicators to rank the world’s top 1000 universities. The indicators are:

1. Quality of Education: measured by the number of a university’s alumni who have won major international awards, prizes, and medals relative to the university’s size (25%)

2. Alumni Employment, measured by the number of a university’s alumni who have held CEO positions at the world’s top companies relative to the university’s size (25%)

3. Quality of Faculty, measured by the number of academics who have won major international awards, prizes, and medals (25%)

4. Publications, measured by the number of research papers appearing in reputable journals (5%)

5. Influence, measured by the number of research papers appearing in highly-influential journals (5%)

6. Citations, measured by the number of highly-cited research papers (5%)

7. Broad Impact, measured by the university’s h-index (5%)

8. Patents, measured by the number of international patent filings (5%)

As Nigerians,  we must wake up and accord the university education the attention and actions it deserves. This is a clarion call to all the stakeholders to do the needful

Prof. C. K. Daudu, ABU Zaria

Dear M. K. Othman

I have read through your Leadership Friday Column - Breakthrough - of June 17 through to July 1, which featured the Educational Feats Of Nigerians in Diaspora: Food For Thought series. I am sure the readers of your column would have found them very exciting, refreshing and even inspiring for young readers especially high-leavers, undergrads and  other students in our higher institutions of learning.
You have also tried making a review of some of the factors weighing heavily against our general educational development but specifically the problems with higher education in Nigeria, some of which were thoroughly dissected in the Needs Assessment document.

It's heart-warming to note that there are people like you out there spreading the gospel. This is because the future of higher education in our country is certainly most dependent on the amount of healthy interest generated amongst, and shown to it by, the public, a task which the Academic Staff Union of Universities had been undertaking through all means at its command. This includes, sadly, when it's has to, by resorting to industrial actions, to brutally and painfully drive home the message. I dare say here, that without the decades long struggles of the Academic community there wouldn't have been any public university system functional in the country!

Keep up the good work! With regards,

Almustapha, L. (PhD)

Industrial actions, strikes, these are words many of us don't like hearing but they are "necessary evils", without them (decades of long struggle), the public universities in Nigeria would have been history. One unique characteristics of ASUU struggle is that, ASUU gives enough time, chance and warning to government to respond before embarking on the industrial action. In fact, all avenues to avoid industrial actions have to be exhausted before ASUU embarks on strike as the last resort. For instance, this year, 2016, ASUU has been calling on government to act on the myriad of issues concerning FGN-ASUU 2009 agreement and 2013 MoU without much success. The last call came through a Press Conference on 18th July, 2016 at Labour House, Abuja. In  the document presented at the Press Conference, ASUU itemized the issues concerning FGN-ASUU 2009 agreement, 2013 MoU and actions to avert industrial crisis in the university system.   ASUU stated "Comrades and compatriots, our Union is seriously worried about number of issues emanating from 2009 Agreement and subsequently, the 2013 Memorandum of Understanding with Federal Government, which remained unaddressed". The issues raised were germane but top among them were "Earned Academic Allowances and Funding of universities". On the Earned Academic Allowances, the amount required to address the issue is approximately N128 billion and government has not made additional payment after the initial amount of N30 billion made in 2013 against the pledge to pay up before 2015. On funding, ASUU asserted "all Nigerian universities are in a state of serious funding crisis, which is becoming worse by the day.....although, the Federal government promised to implement the MoU and will increase the budgetary allocation progressively towards 26% as recommended by UNESCO, this promise has not been translated into action. Rather, budgetary allocation to education dropped from 12% to 11% and 8% in 2014, 2015 and 2016, respectively".

It is apparent that the Federal Government is in tight corner on the way to address these challenges. It is an open secret that Nigeria is in economic recession with dwindling income from sales of crude oil, the mainstay of the economy. The price oil has drastically reduced at the international market. Similarly, The Nigerian oil production has reduced compared to what Nigeria was producing a year ago. However, there is a great chance to avert the looming crisis. As a matter of urgency, President Muhammadu Buhari can invite ASUU to a meeting for a way forward. ASUU leadership, being the intellectuals of our society can certainly understand Nigerian precarious  economic and political situations; and can proffer solution. All the past three Nigerian Presidents met with ASUU at different times when ASUU was already on strike and there was a stalemate with negotiating team. That was how the strikes were suspended but we don't have to wait for the strike to resume, it will be expensive for the system. It is better to act now than latter.

M. K. Othman   

Link for Newspaper version in PDF format