Ahmadu Bello University Revolution in Seeds Technology II

Ahmadu Bello University Revolution in Seeds Technology II

Last week, printer's devil was at work in this column; the picture of amiable Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, Prof. Ibrahim Garba was erroneously replaced with the picture of maize seeds and vice versa. The error is highly regretted. Now, continuation of the last week article.

The second IAR mandate crop is sorghum popularly called "guinea corn". Sorghum is traditionally used for preparing evening meals in many households of north eastern Nigeria. However, sorghum is among the most efficient crops in conversion of solar energy and use of water. Sorghum is known as a high-energy, drought-tolerant crop. Because of its versatility and adaptation, “sorghum is one of the really indispensable crops” required for animals feeds, brewing and production of ethanol. Sorghum produces the same amount of ethanol per bushel as comparable feedstocks and uses one third less water. In the livestock market, sorghum is used in the poultry, beef and pork industries. Stems and foliage are used for green chop, hay, silage, and pasture. In some parts of Nigeria, sorghum is primarily used in couscous. Various fermented and unfermented beverages are made from sorghum. It can be steamed or popped and is consumed as a fresh vegetable in some areas of the world. Syrup is made from sweet sorghum.

In the last 15 years, Ahmadu Bello University through IAR and Plant Science Department has developed several varieties of sorghum to serve different purposes across the country. The prominent among these varieties are SAMSORG 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 14 and 17. Others are SAMSORG 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43 and 44, respectively. Some of these improved varieties are semi -dwarf, creamed coloured seed, white coloured seed, resistant to major leaf diseases and pests, early maturity, striga resistant and many other good qualities against some environmental and climatic challenges. Outstanding characteristics of the varieties are non-photosensitive, excellent seed quality as in the case of SAMSORG 6, good palatability, highest yielding as in the case of SAMSORG 14 and excellent for composite flour as in the case of SAMSORG 38 and 39. Good malting quality varieties were similarly developed and released such as SAMSORG 42, 43 and 44, Malt extract contents for these varieties were found to range from 65% to 78%. Similarly, they were found to be excellent for composite flour making. Another specialized variety of sorghum is CSR - 01 and CSR - 2, which are adaptable to Northern Guinea savanna and southern Sudan savanna zones. The variety is resistant to major leaf diseases and highly tolerant to striga. The uniqueness of this variety is linked to being excellent for malting and confectionaries in addition to being a high quality seed. These last four varieties were developed specifically for industrial purposes, which our local foods and beverages industries should take advantage instead of massive importation of Malta. These category of varieties are high yielding and open pollinated sorghums developed for Nigeria and Sahelian region.

The second category of sorghum varieties are hybrids. Under this category, ABU has developed and released several varieties such as CSR - 03H, 04H, PRADHAN, MLSH 296 Gold, MLSH 151, PD86W15 and PD87W16. These are high yielding varieties with potential yield ranging from 4 to 6 tons per hectare, good malting and food qualities, tolerant to smut, leaf blight, sooty stripe, downey mildew, shoot fly and matured extra early. Some of the outstanding qualities are high germination energy of more than 90 % and malt extra content of more than 70 %.

Cotton is another IAR mandate crop, which the Institute has been vigorously working on. Cotton comes from cultivated plants from the genus Gossypium. They have been cultivated since ancient times for their fibres, which are used as textiles. Cotton is a part of our daily lives from the time we dry our faces on a soft cotton towel in the morning until we slide between fresh cotton sheets and pillows at night. Cotton has multiple uses, from blue jeans to shoe strings. Clothing and household items are the largest products of cotton, but industrial products account for the use of millions tons of cottons on daily basis. Cotton has other, more surprising usages from medicines to mattresses to seed oil and even sausage skins. Example, U.S. textile mills presently consume approximately 7.6 million bales of cotton a year. Eventually, about 57% of it is converted into apparel, more than a third into home furnishings and the remainder into industrial products. Industrial products containing cotton are as diverse as wall coverings, book-bindings and zipper tapes. The biggest cotton users in this category, however, are medical supplies, industrial thread and tarpaulins. Cotton’s competitive share of U.S. produced textile end-uses shows a steady increase, presently standing at approximately 34%. Cotton’s share of the retail apparel and home furnishings market has grown from a historic low of 34% in the early 1970s to more than 60% today. Cotton is the major input of textile industries with hundreds of thousands employees eking a living in many countries.

In the last 15 years, about 15 varieties of cotton were developed and released to public by IAR, ABU Zaria. The varieties are Samcot 1, 2, 3, 4, up to 14. The outstanding characteristics of these cotton varieties are high yielding (1.5 to 2.0 tons per hectare), from early to medium maturity,  tolerant to pest/diseases such as moderately resistant to bacterial blight, alternaria leaf spot. Some of were developed for improved fiber length, medium staple cotton, fine lint and tolerant to salinity condition. These are features of good quality cotton targeted at meeting the demands of the textile industries in the country as well as exportation to neighboring countries. The commercial cotton farmers should be happy with these varietal improvements.

The next IAR mandate crop is cowpea popularly known as beans. Cowpea is one of the most important food legume crops in the semiarid tropics covering Asia, Africa, southern Europe, and Central and South America. It is a drought-tolerant and warm-weather crop. Cowpea is well-adapted to the drier regions of the tropics, where other food legumes do not perform well. The crop also has the useful ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen through its root nodules, and it grows well in poor soils with more than 85% sand and with less than 0.2% organic matter and low levels of phosphorus. In addition, it is shade tolerant, so is compatible as an intercrop with maize, millet, sorghum, sugarcane, and cotton. This makes cowpeas an important component of traditional intercropping systems, especially in the complex and elegant subsistence farming systems of the dry savannas in sub-Saharan Africa. In these systems the dried stalks of cowpea is a valuable by-product, used as animal feed. Cowpea are used for the production of many Nigerian dishes such as bean cake, rice and beans mixture, moi-moi among others. Cowpea provides a rich source of proteins and calories, as well as minerals and vitamins. On the average, a cowpea seed consist of 24.5% protein, Fat 1.9%, Fiber 6.3%, Carbohydrate 63.6% and it is low in anti-nutritional factors. This diet complements the mainly cereal diet in Nigeria and Niger Republic where cowpeas are grown as a major food crop. According to literature, most cowpeas are grown on the African continent, particularly in Nigeria and Niger republic, which account for 66% of the world cowpea production. Despite this huge production in these countries, however, the major challenge to cowpea production is the low yield per hectare obtain by farmers. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations as of 2012, the average cowpea yield in Western Africa was an estimated 483 kg/ha, which is 50% below the estimated potential production yield of the crop especially in developed countries. In some tradition cropping methods, the yield was reported to be as low as 100 kg/ha. In addition to the low yield, the crop is highly prone and vunerable to pests and diseases especially during production and storage. Addressing these two major constraints against cowpea production are the main focus of cowpea varietal breeding by IAR, ABU Zaria. From 1979 to 2014, a total of fifteen cowpea varieties were developed and released to the stakeholders by the university. (to be continued next week)

  

Ahmadu Bello University Revolution in Seeds Technology

Ahmadu Bello University Revolution in Seeds Technology

Seeds constitute solid foundation for agriculture - crops and livestock productions; good and improved quality seeds connote bedrock foundation for agriculture while poor and unviable  seeds connote shaky and shallow foundation. Thus, seed is the first most important input in agricultural production.  Improved quality seed is the basic potential element of increasing yield as well as fundamental in complementing the efficiency of other farm inputs.  For instance, the efficiency of fertilizers, agro-chemicals, agro-machinery and new practice are enhanced and achieved through the use of improved quality seed. Without good seeds, the performance of other inputs will amount to nothing. In fact, greater percentage of improvement in agricultural production has come from the use of improved seed. In essence, no farm operations and practices such as weeding, fertilization, irrigation etc can improve crop production beyond the limit set by seed. This is why all efforts are geared towards improvement of crop varieties that are higher yielding, early maturing, more resistant to diseases and pests, and adaptable to different ecologies. This means that seeds are developed not only to increase yield but to reduce cost (remove or reduce weeds, pests and disease resistant variety) and reduce time (early maturing variety) or even reduce crop water intake (drought tolerant variety).

Improved and viable seeds are developed with due considerations of the environmental ecology, climate, market needs and the dieting culture of the people. The process of seeds development to serve targeted purposes is achieved through plant breeding. Plant breeding is the art and science of changing the traits of plants in order to produce desired characteristics. Plant breeding can be accomplished through many different techniques ranging from simply selecting plants with desirable characteristics for propagation, to more complex molecular techniques. Plant breeding activities lead to the development and release of improved crop varieties. The purpose of releasing improved crop varieties is to increase productivity and overall crop production to anchor food security. Food security is achievable through mass utilization of varieties which are high yielding, resistant/tolerant to pests and disease pressures, ecologically suitable, tolerance to drought and soil mineral toxicity.

 Plant breeding has been practiced for thousands of years, since near the beginning of human civilization. It is practiced worldwide by individuals such as gardeners and farmers, or by professional plant breeders employed by organizations such as government institutions, universities, crop-specific industry associations or research centers. International development nation agencies believe that breeding new crops is important for ensuring food security by developing new varieties targeted to suit different environments and growing conditions. To successfully accomplished this noble task, all the factors of production likely to affect viability and genetic purity of the crops must be taken into account. Similarly, the production techniques should be mastered and the environmental conditions be well known. This makes plant breeding to be a specialized discipline of science in agricultural technology.

Seeds development and production in Nigeria have evolved over the last 30 years in terms of seed science and commercial seed production capabilities. However, the efforts are far below expectation in terms of meeting the agricultural seed needs of the country. Consequently, the government of Nigeria had to massively import rice seeds in 2012, while vegetable seeds are currently being imported through the informal channels. The development and performance of the seed sector is constrained by many factors. Some of the factors are weak technical capacity, poor market mechanisms, inefficient enforcement of seed law, information asymmetry, insufficient capital investment and low utilization of innovations among others. In spite of these challenges, some Institutions are investing human and materials resources to develop seeds for various crops and ecologies to meet Nigerian seeds requirements. It is within this premise that the efforts of Ahmadu Bello University Zaria in seed technology has to be recognized.

Ahmadu Bello University Zaria is one of the first generation universities in Nigeria. It was established in 1962 by the Government of the then Northern Region of Nigeria to impart knowledge and learning to men and women of all races without distinction on the grounds of race, religious or political beliefs. The founding fathers expected the University to aspire to the highest international ideals of scholarship and to provide learning of a standard required and expected of a university of the highest standing while reflecting the needs, the traditions, and the social and intellectual heritage of the society in which it is located. The University was taken over by the Federal Government of Nigeria in 1975 and has since then assumed a national mandate although its ties with the 19 states created out of the former Northern Region remain very strong.

In the over forty years of its existence, the ABU has grown to become the largest, and the most influential and diverse university in Nigeria. It consists over 100 Academic Departments, twelve Faculties, and twelve Research Institutes and Specialized Centres. The University offers undergraduate and postgraduate courses in diverse fields of Agriculture, Public and Business Administration, Engineering, Environmental Design, Education, Biological and Physical Sciences, Medical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, the Humanities, Law and Social Sciences. The university has two campuses; Samaru and Kongo covering an estimated area of 7,000 hectares of land. Another unique feature of the University, as opposed to other Institutions of its type in Nigeria, is that it has both staff and students from all nooks and cranny of Nigeria, neighboring countries and few other countries across the continents. The university alumni cut across the social classes from former Nigerian President, Vice President, serving and former governors/Deputy governors of virtually all the 36 governors plus Federal Capital Territory, Abuja down to hundreds of local government councils nationwide.

Two prominent units of the university; Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR) and Department of Plant Science are jointly and concertedly   working to develop new or improve the quality of existing seeds for the nine strategic crops in Nigerian Ecological zones. The ecological zones in Nigeria are extremely diverse with average annual rainfall of less than  700 mm for some areas and over 4000 mm for others. Despite the challenge pose by this diversity, ABU has been assiduously recording successes in the development of seeds for the nation and the West African sub region. The underneath of this feat is the caliber of the manpower possessed by the university. ABU has eminent professors charged with the responsibilities of breeding the nine strategic seeds to achieve the mandates of IAR as a research Institute and the University as a citadel of learning and community development agency.  In this vein, IAR was saddled with statutory function of genetic improvement of nine different crops. The efforts of the institute led to the development and released of many improved varieties of these crops. The crops varieties were developed to meet the demands of different categories of producers, ranging from students, to farmers, industrialists and scientists. The IAR mandate crops are Maize, Sorghum, Groundnut, Cowpea, Cotton, Sunflower, Castor, Jatropa and Artimesia, respectively.  A research team was assigned for each crop with clear mandate to improve the existing varieties against environmental constraints, prevalent pests and diseases known for the crops. On continuous basis, the research team consisting of Professors, Associate Professors, Senior Lecturers down to postgraduate students work together to achieve success.   Some of the recorded successes are:

1. Maize; It is one the most stable food crops accepted by all the strata of the Nigerian society. This is why over 30 commercially grown varieties were developed and released by IAR in the last ten years. All kind of maize varieties were developed, prominent among them are drought tolerance and early maturing varieties such as SAMMAZ 13, SAMMAZ 18, SAMMAZ 19, ZAMMAZ 21 and many others. Some of the good qualities of these early maturing varieties are tolerant to striga and hermonthica infestation; resistant to streak, low soil nitrogen  tolerance and ability to mature from 60 days to 95 days depending on the particular variety. The other category of maize varieties developed by IAR were SAMMAZ 14, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24 and 25. These varieties have maturity period ranging from 100 to 120 days. They are high yielding varieties, striga resistance and adaptable to Nigerian Savanna, hermonthica prone zones. Their yields ranged from 5 to 8 tons per hectare compared with national average of 2 tons per hectare obtain by most maize farmers using traditional local seed varieties (Continue next week).

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