Minister of agriculture and food security, Abubakar Kyari yesterday stated that Nigeria needs at least 70,000 tractors to achieve food security and boost mechanised farming in the country.
He said his ministry was working to wrap up its programme to achieve 2000 tractors by the end of the year, and that he was concerned about the impact of the wet season on the project.
The minister who spoke at a meeting with John Deere, a leading manufacturer of agricultural machinery in Abuja, added that he would speed up the process and find out what was delaying the delivery of the tractors since the ministry had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the company in November 2023 to supply 2,000 tractors annually for the next five years.
Kyari said that his goal was to target 70,000 tractors for mechanisation across the estimated 35 million hectares of arable land available in the country. He said that this would improve the productivity and income of the farmers, as well as the food security of the nation.
The minister urged the stakeholders to support the vision and not to be pessimistic about the challenges facing the sector. He said that he was confident that the mechanisation programme would work and that it was the right time and direction for the agricultural sector.
He said, “My concern is the wet season, we need to quickly see the effect of what we have done before the wet season so that it can be of benefit to the country. We will speed up and then we will find out what is pulling John Deere behind.
“We have about 35 million hectares of arable land. If you just take two tractors per hectare, that is just about 70,000, I think I mentioned something like 72,000… by and large, I think for now let’s target 70,000. I think we should be able to achieve a considerable level of mechanisation with that.
“What we have here is 10,000 for the next five years and the possibility of even wrapping up that depending on how successful the programme is. We are challenged as a nation and the land is shrinking, we need to increase yields and part of that is to improve our mechanization.”
