Prioritise farm mechanisation to increase production at lower costs
Although heavy machines are costly, there are many tools available at Tk20-30 each. Yet, farmers bear a significant amount of the costs after the 50-70% subsidy. If the government contribution can be raised, the use of agricultural machinery will be adopted rapidly
Increasing the use of agricultural machinery is now imperative to increase yields, reduce post-harvest losses and address labour shortages. The government should raise the subsidy on the machinery to 80%, if possible, from the existing 50-70%.
The subsidy policy should also be more inclusive because farm mechanisation can play a vital role to increase production and ensure food security in the coming days.
Although heavy machines are costly, there are many tools available at Tk20-30 each. Yet, farmers bear a significant amount of the costs after the 50-70% subsidy. If the government contribution can be raised, the use of agricultural machinery will increase rapidly.
Furthermore, it will help address labour shortages and reduce production costs substantially. For example, farmers now spend some Tk6,000 to cultivate an acre of farmland traditionally. The use of a power triller can cut the cost to Tk1,600, and using a tractor can cut that to Tk800.
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Similarly, the cost of planting rice seedlings on an acre can be brought down to Tk2,500 from Tk8,000 and harvesting to Tk2,500 from Tk6,000 with the use of machines.
In the case of rice cultivation, the current post-harvest loss is around 10-13%. Mechanisation can cut the loss to 3% only.
As there is no alternative to agricultural mechanisation to overcome the challenges related to food security, it is important to speed up the rate at which the use of agricultural machinery is currently increasing.
The annual growth in the use of power tillers is now 8% and tractors 12% nationally, while ACI, as a single company attains 30% annual growth in sales of the two items on average. ACI also sees a 20% growth in sales of transplanters against the average national growth of 12%.
Our field experience says planting seedlings with rice transplanters can reduce the yield gap by up to 5%, which means that more seedlings can be planted on the same land. It can have a significant impact on productivity.
Yet, rice transplanters are used on only 1% of our farmlands due mainly to the higher prices of the machines. The government is giving 50-70% subsidy for the item but the aid is not equal for all the regions across the country. The subsidy should be raised to 80% for a certain period to implement the national policy of boosting production at lower costs.
Another reason behind the increased importance of agricultural machinery is climate change as the agricultural sector deals with sudden disasters and other natural calamities, from the frontline.
The machines help farmers harvest their crops fast and early, which is why many farmlands can now be saved from floods. For example, haor farmers earlier used to cultivate the BR-28 and BR-29 varieties of paddy in the Boro season, which would take 145-150 days to grow. At the moment of paddy ripening, floods were common.
Nowadays, many hybrid varieties of paddy, yielding in 130-135 days, are cultivated there and machines are used to harvest these. So, a kind of safety is created there.
To sum up, the use of machinery in agriculture has become crucial for overall food security. Therefore, the government has no choice but to provide more policy support to promote agricultural mechanisation.
The author is the managing director of ACI Agribusinesses
