Chad government provides tractor tilling service to small holders

The government of Chad has acquired 900 tractors to plow a projected 450,000 hectares of land for small holder farmers across the country.

It is hoped that 900,000 tonnes of grain will result from the government mechanization programme. At an average of two hectares per tonne this is low by world standards, but is up to five times more than what smallholders working the land manually and without other inputs typically harvest per hectare.

It is hoped the fees paid for the service by farmers will be enough to keep the programme going. But as elsewhere where communal farm machine tools have been tried, needed maintenance is not always readily available when needed.

full article...IPS

Malawi receives US$ 55 million farm equipment loan from India

The government of India on December 19 2011 handed over 177 tractors and 144 maize shellers to Malawi on a loan facility under Line of Credit Corporation from Exim Bank of India.

Malawi will repay the loan within 40 years. The loan is said to be valued at 55 million US dollars and was duly approved by the Malawi Parliament.

Zodiak Online

A farmer contrasts his U.S. and Ghana farming experiences

Kristopher Klokkenga is a 32 year old farmer from Emden, Illinois, who has been involved in setting up a new commercial farm in Ghana since 2010.

His clearly written, easy to digest descriptions of his experiences, particularly the differences between the two places, make very interesting reading.

On a trip back to Illinois, he expresses relief at getting a break from Ghana’s mostly all-year round sweltering equatorial heat. He is reminded of how ready access to the latest farming technological gadgets greatly eases harvest on his family’s Illinois farm, compared to his experience harvesting maize in Ghana.

He writes, “Budgets become extremely important to conserve our limited funds. So instead of a importing an expensive combine to use for harvesting our small area, we used a New Idea 325 2RN, the same type of picker that Grandpa used 50 years ago”

On the other hand, he appreciates how the climate in Ghana makes two maize harvests possible in one year.  

more…Growing Pains in Africa

Iran exports agricultural equipment to Tanzania

Iran's Northern Mazandaran province exported a third cargo of home-made agricultural machineries to Africa in late December 2011, a trade official announced.

"The cargo which was worth over $90,000 was exported to Tanzania from Babolsar city yesterday," said Deputy Head of the Industry, Mine and Trade Organization of Mazandaran province for Foreign Trade, Mehdi Golchoub.

According to Golchoub, the cargo included different machineries, including tractors, plows and spare parts. He further described the African countries, specially Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, as proper destination markets for export of different types of Iranian agricultural machineries.

"These markets are highly suitable for export of different types of agricultural machineries and also engineering and technical services," he added.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration has striven hard to maximize relations with the African continent.

Iran is also an observing member of the AU and has shown an active presence in previous AU summit meetings.

The country is considered as one of the AU's strategic partners along with India, Japan, China, several South American states and Turkey, while Tehran is also believed to be prioritizing promotion of its economic and political ties with the African states.


FARS News

Nigeria removes import duty on agricultural equipment

As part of measures to diversify the country’s economy, the Nigerian government has removed import duty on agricultural equipment.

The private Guardian Newspaper quoted the Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Mr. Abdullahi Dikko, as saying the gesture would help to boost local agricultural production, generate employment and reduce youth restiveness in the country.

“We have realized that we have to face the reality of the times. Agriculture is a backbone of any economy. We are now moving towards agriculture. The President has removed all import duty on agriculture equipment and we try to patronize goods that are being manufactured in Nigeria to boost our own production, create more employment opportunities and reduce restiveness so that, at least, the country will have peace and we will move politically and economically.’’ he added.

Afriquejet

Provincial tractors scheme for new South African farmers off to slow start

Members of the African Farmers’ Association of South Africa in the Ehlanzeni district have accused the provincial department of agriculture, rural development and land administration of failing to hire a service provider to manage the 33 tractors under the programme.

The tractors are owned by the state, but are managed by service providers who, in turn, make the tractors and their drivers available to emerging farmers free of charge.

“Cotton farmers in the Nkomazi region were supposed to have started planting this month, but they are stuck because the tractors are locked up because the department still hasn't hired a service provider. We are all therefore affected and urge the department to give us full control so that we can manage these tractors on our own,” said association secretary Petrus Sithole.

Sithole said the association's branches across the province were willing to elect governing bodies to help run the programme in their respective areas.

“Our counterparts in other provinces have already started with soil preparation and cultivation practices while we are struggling to till our pieces of land, this holds us back,” said Sithole, who is a maize farmer.

Sithole said the move would also ensure that farmers were unable to bribe tractor drivers into giving them preferential treatment. He said every farmer would be on a list indicating the number of hectares that need to be ploughed.

The Masibuyele Emasimini programme was introduced in 2005 to encourage communities to take advantage of government's agriculture-related projects.

The project affords black farmers a realistic chance to improve production, increase yields and gain access to domestic and global markets.

A cotton farmer from Sekhwahlane village near Malalane, James Biya, said he had to use his own money to plough his farm because he could not afford to miss the planting period.

“Planting time is very crucial when farming cotton because you need to prepare the soil first. The project has indeed failed; I will now only be able to farm 3ha while my farm is about 7ha,” said Biya.

During her recent budget speech, Agriculture MEC Candith Mashego Dlamini said the province had allocated R170m for the Masibuyele Emasimini programme, R42m of which would be used by the capitalisation programme.

News 24

Ghana: 110 combine harvesters for Northern Region rice farmers

The Ghanaian government has delivered 110 combine harvesters for distribution to farmers across the Northern Region to improve rice farms.

The machines, which come in addition to 18 larger combined harvesters distributed last year, are expected to reach the farmers early enough for the harvest season next month.

The Northern Regional Director of Agriculture, Mr Joseph Faalong,said that although the region would need more such harvesters, the latest addition would help the farmers a great deal to harvest their crops before they experienced any worse form of flooding.

Rice production in the region is expected to go up this year, following various interventions by the government and development partners under the Breadbasket project, an agricultural productivity programme for the northern part of the country.

Last year, the government subsided 100,000 tonnes of fertilisers to farmers, out of which the Northern Region consumed 39 per cent. This year, 150,000 tonnes would be subsidised to benefit more farmers who, agricultural experts in the north said, were gradually waking up to its importance in increasing yields.

With the subsidies, the farmers purchase the fertilisers for GH¢30 instead of the non-sibsidised price of GH¢45.

About 70 per cent of the total land mass of the Northern Region, measuring about 4.9 million hactares, is arable but only about 800,000 hectares (representing 16 per cent) is under cultivation, in spite of the availability of water resources in the area. About 10 per cent of the Volta Lake lies within the region to the benefit of some 210 communities.

Modern Ghana

Zimbabwe to acquire farming equipment from Brazil

by Martin Kadzere

Zimbabwe is set to acquire irrigation equipment and various farm machinery from Brazil.

A source close to the deal said Brazil would supply Zimbabwe with farm equipment which include tractors, combine harvesters and irrigation equipment worth US$98 million. The farm equipment will be earmarked for both small scale and commercial farmers.

The two countries are now finalising the repayment period and rate of interest.

The Herald

KickStart pump helping to boost Africa's irrigation capacity

by Jonathan Kalan

How can Africa break out of its dependence upon subsistence farming?

One way is through simple water pumps. Across the continent farmers depend on rainfall to nourish their crops and despite hard work only manage to eke out a meager living.

An innovative manual pump system, designed to cheaply and effectively irrigate 1 to 2 acres of land is finding customers, rich and poor, across East Africa.

KickStart, creator of the pumps, is a social enterprise which for the past 22 years has designed, marketed, and sold appropriate technologies meant to “get millions of people out of poverty quickly, cost-effectively and sustainably.” The company says its aim is to “change the way the world fights poverty.”

The MoneyMaker Hip Pump and Super MoneyMaker Pump, KickStart’s two flagship products, have helped launch over 111,800 new businesses, lifted over 500,000 people out of poverty, and are generating $113 million in new profits annually through agriculture, according to their website. The pumps, on average, result in a “10-fold increase in income" for customers, according to KickStart’s co-founder Nick Moon.

“It’s not about having the best mousetrap in the world. It’s about painting it the right color, giving it the right name, and making it accessible to people,” says Moon.

Some 90 to 96 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s population is still dependent on rain-fed agriculture, where crops can be harvested only once or twice per year, resulting in a feast-famine production cycle that continually challenges Africa.

In Tanzania, the agricultural sector accounts for nearly 80 percent of employment and 75 percent of rural household income, yet only 26.5 percent of GDP. Land for farming is readily available. Effective tools for small-scale irrigation, on the other hand, are not.

Alfred Wise, KickStart’s Country Director for Tanzania, explains that technologies such as the MoneyMaker pumps allow people “to grow more, more often.” The pumps enable small landholder farmers to switch from low value to high value crops, and become less dependent on rain.

Through marketing these cost-effective pumps, KickStart is vying to transform small, subsistence farmers into productive business units that, they hope, will feed Africa’s growing food demands.

Although KickStart is a nonprofit organization, they consider themselves a “social enterprise” because they sell their pumps, rather than distributing them for free. Through an extensive network of 220 branded dealers across Tanzania, they have sold over 40,000 pumps since beginning operations in 2000, at a price much lower than diesel pumps ($66 for the MoneyMaker Hip and $112 for the Super MoneyMaker.)

Moon says that KickStart is a nonprofit due to the high cost of funding R&D efforts for these productivity-increasing technologies. Since “the African governments are not typically funding R&D”, he says that donors are needed to support R&D and subsidize the cost of the pumps and accelerate the diffusion of this technology.

Yet the pumps have their limitations. Only 12 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s population lives in areas with a water source within 23 feet of the surface to use the pump.

In addition, not all customers are using the pumps to be “lifted out of poverty.” Gideon Mgweno, a Monitoring and Evaluation officer for KickStart Tanzania, estimates 12 to 20 percent of their pumps are purchased by individuals who use them for domestic use, such as pumping water into an elevated tank when the electricity is out. Finally, the pump can’t help those who lack land, seeds, fertilizers and a market.

Despite their limitations, these pumps appear to highlight the power, potential and ultimate need for innovation in Africa’s agricultural sector.

Global Post

Burkina Faso to supply small scale farmers with subsidized ploughs

by Brahima Ouédraogo

The government of Burkina Faso has responded to long-standing demands of farmers for greater support for small family producers with the launch of "Operation 100,000 Ploughs." Smallholder farmers say this will strengthen the country's food security.

"The operation is welcomed by the Confédération Paysanne du Faso," said Bassiako Dao, who is president of the country's largest smallholder farmer organisation. "Because today, the difficulty facing our agriculture sector is that it is not mechanised. Mechanisation would allow us to quickly reduce the labour time needed.

"Instead of having five people working year-round on two hectares, with an animal-drawn plough, just one person can work two hectares in four days, covering half a hectare per day. The four others are freed up to do something else," Dao said.

The operation, launched in June, will make 20,000 ploughs available to the poorest rural households in each of the next five years, half of them to be given to women. According to Dao, the ploughs will be made affordable thanks to an 80 percent subsidy from the government.

The agriculture ministry says that half of the farmers in the cotton-producing regions of the country have access to some level of mechanisation, but in other zones this falls to just one or two percent.

The agriculture sector generates 40 percent of the gross domestic product of Burkina Faso and the authorities hope that with funding for agricultural mechanisation over the next four years, it can raise the proportion of farmers who are mechanised country-wide from the present 20 percent to 75 percent in 2015.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Water, draught power is the most widespread form of mechanisation in Burkina, where 30 percent of households own at least one draught animal; 30 percent of these households also possess a tool for tillage and 20 percent have a cart.

Farmers also say that tilling with a plough allows the soil to better absorb water, preserving moisture far longer than a field tilled with a traditional hoe, known in Burkina Faso as a daba. Sawadogo also explains that animals provide a natural fertiliser in the form of manure.

Women, who constitute an important part of the agricultural labour force will receive half of the ploughs. "They will till more than the usual quarter of a hectare – they'll be able to cultivate as much as four hectares," says Dao. "The sight of women bent over, working in a field, babies on their backs; that will be finished, thanks to this initiative."

Since demonstrations against the high cost of living in the country in 2008, the government has provided around 15.7 million dollars of support to farmers in the form of agricultural inputs.

"We have to encouarge this initiative which will benefit families. On the other hand, we are opposed to those who have plenty of money, and buy 150 hectares and a Caterpillar and then strip the land of trees and plant cotton or maize," says SOS Sahel's Sawadogo, who is critical of authorities' encouragement of agri-business operators in recent years.

"It's a bad form of agriculture which will destroy our environment and our soils which cannot support work with tractors for a long time. If there is not adquate support so that there is organic fertiliser with livestock to enrich the soils, the tractors will turn our soil into sand," warned Sawadogo.

IPS

AGCO provides tractor to assist Ugandan college

AGCO, a Fortune 500 company and worldwide manufacturer and distributor of agricultural equipment, announces the donation of a Massey Ferguson 435 with a disk plow and disk harrow to the Plant-A-Seed Foundation.

The non-profit organization will use the tractor to support the Kabale Trinity College in Uganda. "We are very pleased to donate a tractor for a good cause that makes a positive difference for the students at Kabale Trinity College," said Martin Richenhagen, Chairman, President and CEO of AGCO.

The Plant-A-Seed Foundation, based in Modesto, California, at the 92 year old offices of Stanislaus Implements and Hardware  has supported the Kabale community since 2003. Plant-A-Seed purchased property and built a chapel and school with classrooms and dormitories. The organization sent teams to assist, plan and build the school, along with additional needed quarters for the staff. Currently, 1,350 students are enrolled at Kabale Trinity College.

In 2007, Plant-A-Seed purchased 20 acres of land and a local farm that produces bananas, pineapples, corn and goats. In 2008, Plant-A-Seed built an irrigation system that has tripled the production of the farm and also gives neighbors the opportunity to purchase water from the farm's pumping resources.

The farm now serves as a school farm where students learn simple farm practices and even supply some food to the local population. The key objective of Plant-A-Seed is to initiate local projects, while empowering community partners to drive their own projects.

This Massey Ferguson tractor was shipped to Uganda to be used by the school farm and handed over by representatives of the Plant-A-Seed Foundation. The tractor will be used for many applications, including tilling fields, moving bricks and dirt, and transporting food to the school and to market. Massey Ferguson tractors have been used in Africa for many decades and the Massey Ferguson 435 is a particularly robust model that can be used in challenging environments.

AGCO has over 50 years of experience in Africa. Massey Ferguson(R) is a worldwide brand of AGCO and is a key brand in Africa.

AGCO

Tanzania: 3000 imported tractors stuck at ports

by Al-amani Mutarubukwa

About 3,000 tractors imported under the Kilimo Kwanza initiative are reported to be held at the Dar es Salaam port and in other inland container depots due to misunderstanding on related tax waivers.

Indian businessmen that grabbed opportunity brought by the Kilimo Kwanza initiative to import agro-machinery, have complained that they were discouraged by the bureaucracy at the port during clearance of the farm inputs imported under the initiative.

“Due to that, some traders have not cleared about 3,000 tractors since last October, and as a result, they were supposed to pay some $3 million as storage charges at shipping lines and ICDs,” said Mr Anver Rajpar of Seaforth shipping company at the Symposium on Kilimo Kwanza organised by Tanzania-India Friendship Association.

He appealed to the government to run to intervene, otherwise the whole clearing costs would be passed to farmers by adjusting prices that majority wont afford. Responding to the claims, the deputy permanent secretary from the prime minister’s office, Mr Charles Parangyo said the government had already directed the ship lines and the ICDs to reduce the charges down by 55 per cent and that the government would pay the debt by the remaining 45 per cent.

“The government has already taken initiatives to see the tractors are taken to SUMA-JKT at Mwenge grounds as soon as possible,” he said. During his presentation on “A point of view of the Business Community on Kilimo Kwanza,” by Mr Rajpar said there was a need to educate all organs relating to importation because even as importing of farm implement was duty-free under Kilimo Kwanza, it was still difficult to clear the tools and spares at the port.

Experts say lack of proper arrangement for mechanization could hinder the Agriculture First initiative to bear fruits since only few tractors have been distributed in remote areas.

“Most of the tractors imported are still docked in Dar es Salaam showrooms …the government was supposed to know that Tanzanian farmer cannot afford buying the 80horsepower tractor for tilling his hardly 2-acre farm,” said Prof Lucien Msambichaka, an economist at University of Dar es Salaam.

The Citizen

Japan donates 125 tractors to Ghana

Ghana’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture has taken delivery of a fleet of 125 tractors as part of a national program to support the development of small farm agriculture. The tractors are a donation by the government of Japan as part of an international aid project.

The New Holland TD80 straddle mount tractors, built at New Holland’s Turkish plant in Ankara, were to be handed over at the premises of the Agricultural Engineering Services Directory of Ghana’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA). CFAO Equipment, New Holland’s official distributor in Ghana, will provide technical and service support for these units.

Introduction of tea picking machines prove controversial in Kenya

by Henry Nyarora

A tug of war between multinational companies and Kenya Plantation Agricultural Workers’ Union over the use of tea plucking machines shows how devastating any new technology can be to the existing economic order at inception.

Despite Kenya adopting them, some tea producing countries have shunned the technology because unlike human labour, its use compromises quality of the leaf picked as they don’t select two soft leaves and a bud required to produce high level of beverages.

Some unionists claim machines are also likely to pick reptiles like green snakes and chameleons.

However, to minimise chances of getting foreign objects into the tea processing section, tea companies have engaged two workers to sort out filthy-free leaves for each machine that is usually operated by other two workers.

As much as the companies strive to maximise profits out of their business through the introduction of mechanisation, the loss of employment of at least 80,000 people who directly or indirectly depend on the industry has spawned massive resistance.

In Sotik in the Rift Valley for example, more than 18,000 casuals who directly get their daily bread as tea pickers have lost jobs due to the introduction of the machines.

In Kericho District where a majority of these multi-national tea companies are situated, more than 40,000 employees are likely to lose their jobs once the tea firms are fully mechanised.

And in North Rift, over 30,000 jobs in estates like Nandi, Kapchorwa and Tinderet are likely to go. Unionists claim that four casuals working under one machine are exploited as they are paid Sh1.60 per kilogramme instead of Sh8.43 per kilogramme paid to a single tea picker using hands.

The plantations’ workers union through Central Organisation Trade Union (Cotu) feels that plucking machines in privately owned companies were introduced hurriedly and without consultation with Kenya Tea Growers Association.

Unions representing workers in the tea sector, however, seem to agree that introduction of the mechanisation in the industry is inevitable as initially they had consented to a few machines being used on an experimental basis for their efficacy compared to human labour.

The union is said to have accepted three per cent introduction of machines but not 85 per cent as it stands now. Cotu secretary general Francis Atwoli and Kenya Plantation Agricultural Workers’ Union assistant secretary general Henry Omasire say tea pickers’ union officials should at all times be consulted whenever a new technology that will affect the workforce is introduced.

“Why is the Labour minister allowing the use of plucking machines in the tea sector yet they are replacing Kenyan workers,” said Mr Omasire.

The union officials have also asked MPs from multi-national tea companies to intervene.

The Nation

Kenyan tea-industry workers strike over machine pickers

by Consolatah Lucas


Tea industry workers in Kenya, the world’s biggest exporter of black tea, began (October 18) a strike to demand that companies minimize the use of picking machines, the Central Organization of Trade Unions said.

The work stoppage went ahead even after employers gained a court order blocking the strike, Adam Baraza, personal assistant to the labor union’s secretary-general, Francis Atwoli, said in an interview.

“COTU fights for workers rights and therefore the strike continues until the issue is addressed,” Baraza said.

The strike involves an estimated 50,000 manual laborers in tea plantations in the western Rift Valley and is aimed at protecting the livelihoods of thousands of Kenyan families who will be affected if machines continue to be used, Baraza said.

Agriculture accounts for a quarter of gross domestic product in Kenya, East Africa’s biggest economy. Tea production may increase by 11 percent to 350 million kilograms (770 million pounds) this year, the Kenya Tea Board said last month.


Bloomberg

Iranian assembly plant in Zimbabwe rolls out first tractors

by Walter Muchinguri

The Zimbabwe-Iran joint tractor manufacturing project, Motira, has started operating at the Willowvale Mazda Motor Industries assembly plant with at least 60 units having been rolled out to date.

The project was launched by the Islamic Republic of Iran head of state, President Mahmoud Ahmajinejad, last month during his official visit to the country when he also officially opened the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair.

Industrial Development Corporation of Zimbabwe Limited spokesperson Mr Derek Sibanda said the tractor units were being assembled using completely knocked down kits.

"Since the commissioning of the tractor assembly line last month, we have assembled to date over 60 tractor units of the Iran Tractor Manufacturing Company (ITMCO), also known locally as the Massey Ferguson brand.

"We are currently assembling seven models ranging from the 47-horsepower to 110-horsepower (4x4) tractors," he said.

He added that the assembly of implements such as disc harrows, ploughs, maize planters and many more would be starting in earnest in the next two weeks.

"We are awaiting a consignment of all implements that any farmer would require and these would also be assembled locally. We want to sell these tractors as a combination so that a farmer does not only buy a tractor without its implements and then finds that he has the burden to hire maybe a plough or disc harrow that suits the tractor model he has," he said.

Mr Sibanda said Motira would also be providing after-sales support and technicians had been sent to Iran for technical training.

"Service will be provided on site by our field service teams. We have positioned ourselves to ensure that we can be at any point in Zimbabwe within three hours from receiving a call-out message. Our after-sales outreach programme will engage farm technicians on basic maintenance and service. A special programme has been designed for tractor drivers to include basic handling and usage of the tractor," said Mr Sibanda

The IDC also says the next phase of the project would be to set up a foundry plant that is targeted at producing about 5 000 tractor units per annum. This is in line with the current capacity at the WMMI assembly plant.

The tractor manufacturing deal is projected earn the country over US$30 million annually from the export of at least 2 000 tractor units.

The Motira tractor company is a joint venture partnership between the Industrial Development Corporation of Zimbabwe Limited, the Iran Tractor Manufacturing Company and the Iran Foreign Investment Company (IFIC). The three parties signed a shareholders’ agreement on the deal in March 2008.

Under the agreement, ITMCO and IFIC jointly hold 55 percent in Motira while IDC has 45 percent although the shareholding would be reviewed at a later stage to take into consideration the country’s empowerment laws.

The implementation of the project, however, took longer due to "administrative issues that had to be agreed upon before the project could roll out and these have since been finalised", said Mr Sibanda.

This resulted in delays in the release of a US$4 million grant that the Iranian Government had provided for the project. The money has since been released.

The Herald

Zimbabwe imports more agricultural equipment from China

More than 300 tractors and other farming implements arrived in Zimbabwe from China last week under a 40-million-U.S. dollar government-supported scheme being facilitated by Farmers World Holdings, The Sunday Mail said.

Other implements in the consignment include 300 disc harrows, 300 ploughs, more than 100 generators of different sizes, excavators, front-end loaders, 300 reapers, 30-ton trucks, 10-tonne trucks, 30 combine harvesters, electric motors for irrigation, irrigation sprinklers and pipes, the newspaper said.

This is the second phase of the program run by Farmers World in partnership with the government.

The first phase was launched in 2006 with 25 million dollars worth of implements being delivered to the country.

Farmers World chief executive Edward Raradza said the consignment that arrived in May had 384 tractors of different sizes. He said farmers needing the equipment were expected to pay a 20 percent deposit. The balance was to be paid over five years at an interest rate of 4 percent.

He said those without cash for deposit could pay using their current crops or livestock with a value equivalent to 20 percent deposit. The prices of the tractors will range from 28,000 dollars to 61,000 dollars. Farmers were urged to buy generators to guarantee power supplies, especially during the winter wheat season.

Raradza said only productive farmers were expected to benefit under the scheme as was the case in the previous one. "We want productive farmers only to come forward for the equipment. Our teams are there to visit the farmers who want to access the equipment to check on their productivity."

He said all the equipment was fully insured unlike in the first phase where farmers were required to insure on their own.

Xinhua

Tractor assembly plant opened in Ghana

The Ghanaian government’s efforts at transforming the face of the country’s agriculture through mechanization has received a major boost with the inauguration by President John Kufuor of a tractor assembling plant and technology transfer centre in Kumasi.

It is a partnership between the Zoomlion Ghana Limited, Mahindra and Mahindra of India, reputed to be one of the topmost tractor manufacturing companies in the world, and the Garages Association of Ghana.

The Plant would have 70 per cent of the tractor parts assembled locally, with just 30 per cent imported from India. It is expected to initially provide jobs for more than 200 people including welders, steel benders, auto mechanics and apprentices from across the country.

Mechanization of agriculture from land preparation through planting, crop maintenance to harvesting, processing and storage is crucial to achieving the country’s goal of self-sufficiency and for export. It was for this reason that the Government has brought in about 3,000 agricultural tractors with matching accessories and varied equipment for processing and storage.

Mr Anand G. Mahindra, President of the Indian Company, said they were poised to deliver on the goal of making the project a success by producing quality and competitively priced tractors to aid Ghana’s drive towards increased agriculture production.

My Joy

Pedal-powered maize sheller to be tested in Tanzania

Across Tanzania and elsewhere in Africa, processing the corn harvest is labor intensive: Families and friends gather to spend a day or two filling bags with the dried cobs, beating then to loosen the kernels, and then separating out the kernels from the cobs, or else simply removing the kernels by hand.

Thanks to a technology largely developed at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), there's a better, faster way.

Jodie Wu, an MIT senior in mechanical engineering, spent the summer traveling from village to village in Tanzania to introduce a new system for processing the corn: A simple attachment for a bicycle that makes it possible to remove the kernels quickly and efficiently using pedal power. The device makes processing up to 30 times faster and allows one person to complete the job alone in one day.

The basic concept for the maize-sheller was first developed in Guatemala by an NGO called MayaPedal, and then refined by Wu last semester as a class project. Now, thanks to Wu's efforts, the technology is beginning to make its way around the world.

Wu developed the new version of the device after being inspired by the work of Bernard Kiwia, who teaches appropriate technology in Tanzania for an NGO called the Global Alliance for Africa. Kiwia visited MIT in the summer of 2007 for the first International Design and Development Summit and returned to Tanzania greatly inspired by the workshop, and immediately began producing a variety of devices to address local needs.

Among these were several bicycle-powered devices, including machine-shop tools like drills and bandsaws. A simple power-transfer system bolted onto the bicycle's frame allows the bicycle to be used normally for transportation, but then quicly converted by switching the chain so that it can be adapted for a variety of tasks -- making or repairing furniture, sharpening knives or processing corn. Thus, the owner of a bicycle, with a small extra investment, can travel from village to village to carry out a variety of useful tasks. A simple bike thereby becomes an ongoing source of income.

Wu refined the corn-sheller system, which was originally designed as a permanent installation that required a bicycle dedicated solely to that purpose, to make it an add-on, like Kiwia's tools, that could be easily bolted onto an ordinary bike and removed easily. She traveled through Tanzania this summer, thanks to a grant from the Baker Foundation through MIT's Public Service Center, to demonstrate how to build the corn sheller and how to use it, and to encourage local people to adopt the new technology. In order to make it possible for more people to buy the simple devices, she worked with a microloan program run by the Global Alliance for Africa.

Wu found the experience highly inspiring and was especially impressed with Kiwia's workshop in Arusha, where new devices are being spawned and tested constantly. "It was the first place where I had seen local technology created right there in the workshop," she says.

Wu had tested the earlier, permanently mounted version of the sheller in Tanzania in January but found that it had some technical issues and was too expensive for the local people to afford. The key to making it practical was to turn it into an add-on, something she accomplished during the spring semester D-Lab class. "That made it a mobile device, something that could be used as a service" by pedaling from one village to another, Wu says. And while this version was developed for Tanzania, she says, corn is grown widely in Africa and Latin America, and the simple bicycle-based technology is readily available in most developing countries, so the device could find widespread application.

"It was exciting to see my device, which I'd worked on with other students, being used by people who are now making money from it," she says. Wu hopes to further refine the design this fall, and plans to return to Tanzania to continue demonstrating its construction and use during next January's IAP.

A blog detailing Wu's experiences in Tanzania can be seen at tumainicycles.blogspot.com.

Media Newswire

Zimbabwe acquires equipment for farm mechanization programme

Zimbabwe's government has launched the fourth phase of its Farm Mechanisation Programme.

Tractors, combine harvesters, disc harrows, ploughs, generators, motorbikes, grinding mills, planters, fertilizer spreaders and knapsacks, among other implements, were released to the committee in charge, which has already targeted at least 500 000 hectares countrywide for food production in the 2008/09 summer cropping season.

Equipment distributed to date included 3 000 tractors, 105 combine harvesters, 1 733 disc harrows, 100 000 ploughs, 78 000 scotchcarts, 200 000 chains and 2 000 planters.

Equipment handed over to the strategic food programme included 20 combine harvesters, 100 tractors, 400 generators, 750 motorbikes, 7 000 scotchcarts, 4 000 animal-drawn harrows, 50 fertilizer spreaders and 150 grinding mills.

Mechanization minister Joseph Made said the Farm Mechanisation Programme was meant to replace obsolete equipment on farms while providing machinery to those farmers that were inadequately capacitated.

"In terms of sheer numbers, there is no way we would have moved agriculture because previously (before land reform) only 10 percent to 15 percent of arable land was being used.’’

Dr Made stressed the importance of early planting to ensure higher yields. At least 55 percent of the land would need to be planted early, with the balance coming onto the middle phase.

"The planting period to get good yields is now," he said.

The Herald