Tractor shortage exposes poor shape of African farms

By Addis Getachew

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AA) - The state of Africa’s mechanized agricultural sector was starkly laid out Thursday when an African Union gathering heard of the shortage of tractors on the continent.

The African Union Commission-Food and Agriculture Organization (AUC-FAO) meeting in Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa heard that there were 13 tractors per 100 square kilometers (42,700 acres) of arable land, compared to a global average of 200 for every 100 sq km.

Even in other developing regions of the world the figure is much higher, with South Asia having 129 tractors per 100 sq km.

Patrick Kormawa, the organization’s coordinator for east Africa, said the problem was not due to a lack of resources in Africa.

“The issue of mechanization has only been mismanaged in Africa,” he told Anadolu Agency. “We have Africans driving Rolls Royces; we have Africans driving Mercedes Benzes. You will not tell me tractor is more expensive than that.”

Kormawa said the AUC-FAO project on sustainable farm mechanization in sub-Saharan Africa would see partners such as the African Development Bank help achieve goals set at a meeting of African leaders in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, in 2014.

“Without a sustainable mechanization strategy…the Africa We Want by 2063 and the Ending Hunger in Africa by 2025 goals will remain a mirage,” he said.

Agriculture has been recognized as a priority for Africa as the continent faces high levels of economic growth, falling commodity prices and the effects of climate change.

According to Makhtar Diop, the World Bank’s vice president for the Africa region, farming provides up to 60 percent of jobs on the continent and is the primary source of food and income for Africans.

“A vibrant, sustainable and resilient agriculture sector is vital for sub-Saharan Africa’s economic future,” he said earlier this year in a blog for the Washington-based Brookings Institute. “Indeed, African agriculture stands at the cusp of transformational change.”

He added that food production in sub-Saharan Africa needed to rise by 60 percent over the next 15 years to feed a growing population and noted that the region contains nearly half the world’s uncultivated land.

One way of tapping into these resources, he said, was to invest in technology to boost crop yields.

Kormawa pointed to the desperate situation facing farming in Africa, where more than 60 percent of agricultural work is done by manpower. “Unless we mechanize, the sector may die out,” he warned.

Despite its resources, the continent imports $65 billion worth of food per year, Kormawa said and highlighted agricultural techniques in Turkey and China as examples for Africa to follow.