Farmers need one million tractors for mechanised farming —TOHFAN

For Nigeria to achieve food sufficiency through mechanised farming, no fewer than one million tractors would be needed.

This was disclosed by the National Chairman of Tractor Owners and Hiring Facilities Association of Nigeria (TOHFAN), Danladi Garba, at the maiden edition of Nigerian Agricultural Mechanisation Exhibition (NAME) 2022, held in Abeokuta, last week.

The exhibition with the theme: “Redefining Agricultural Mechanisation To Enhance Food Security And Boost Agribusiness” was organised by Hephzibah Nigeria Ltd, to address the challenges of mechanisation of the agricultural sector.

He said that 75 percent of farmers in the country still engaged in subsistence farming, while the remaining used animals for farming activities.

“Today, as it in Nigeria, we have only 7,000 functional tractors providing services to Nigerian farmers while the demand level is over one million tractors that should be in place for Nigerian farmers.

“For TOHFAN, between now and five years, we are planning to have 5,000 to 10,000 tractors in our country.

“This is just a drop into the ocean, whereby we need one million tractors, the demand is high while the supply is low.

“For example, last year, we received over 100,000 requests from farmers for tractors, but we were only able to serve 70,000,” the TOHFAN chairman added.

Garba further said that TOHFAN had just 7,000 functional tractors

The TOHFAN chairman lamented that, Nigeria has only 7,000 functional tractors which according to him cannot meet the demands of the farmers in the country.

The Chairman of Hephzibah Nigeria Ltd, Mr. Segun Asiwaju, said, it was regrettable that, 50 percent out of 7,000 hectares of arable land in Nigeria is under cultivation.

He said, “In Nigeria, the ratio is about ten tractors per 100 hectares compared to Indonesia with 241 tractors per 100 hectares”.

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In a communique issued at the opening ceremony, the gathering observed that for the country to be sustainable in food production, agricultural mechanization is inevitable.

It also noted that the nation’s import exceeds her export, and described such as an aberration.

While it also lamented that out of the over 70 million available hectares of land for cultivation, less than 50 per cent is cultivated, attributing this to low tractorisation as the country has just 10 tractors to 100 hectares of land.

Olayinka Olukoya