Hope for farmers, agric productivity on tractor hailing service

Much as he desires tractors to till the ground and plough his farm, Ademola Adefemi, an Ogun State-based farmer, cannot easily lay a hand on one. He, therefore, relies on hired labourers who have to resort to the old farming methods that have kept Nigeria’s agricultural productivity low for decades.

It takes an average of a month for a farmer in Nigeria to get a tractor for ploughing and tilling from the local government centre closest to him owing to the unavailability of tractors. And time is a luxury most farmers cannot afford because they depend on rainfall for their cultivation which makes it time-bound.

“I love using tractors for tilling the land and ploughing but most times it is difficult to get it on time because other farmers want to hire it too,” said Adefemi, who farms maize and cassava on a 10-hectare land in Ogun State.

“Only two tractors are being leased to farmers in Ogun State currently and I had to queue for three weeks before I could hire it,” he said.

But relief is coming the way of farmers like Adefemi as Origin Automobile Works (OAW), an indigenous firm based in Lagos, has created a platform for Nigerian farmers to order for tractors irrespective of where they are located via an app on their mobile phones.

The firm is currently investing heavily and partnering with some tractor assemblers in the country to get enough farming machines on its platforms for its farmers.

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With the initiative, Origin will be able to support the country in addressing its mechanisation problems by ensuring that farmers easily access tractors to perform timely farming operations and achieve economies of scale in food production. Farmers who had in the past struggled to get tractors can now have fast and reliable options to get machines for their farmland.

“We have launched our tractor hailing service so that farmers in the country irrespective of where they are located can order for tractors using their mobile phones,” said Prince S. J. Samuel, president, Origin Group.
Nigeria had only 30,000 tractors as at 2003, according to the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), far below countries like Serbia & Montenegro with 400,000, Pakistan with 320,000, and Uzbekistan with 170,000 tractors.

On a per-capita basis, Nigeria ranked 132nd out of the 188 countries worldwide measured by FAO/United Nations in terms of the number of tractors in the country.

Africa’s largest economy currently adds 1,000 new tractors each year, Audu Ogbeh, immediate past minister of agriculture, said. But this is considered grossly insufficient to replace the ageing, worn-out, and broken-down tractors.

“We hope to address the issues around mechanisation in Nigeria and Africa at large,” Samuel said.
He said the firm already has over 1,000 tractors on board and would increase the number as demand rises.
The firm has also established tractor service centres across the six geo-political zones for servicing and maintenance and it plans to replicate it across every local government area of the country.