Chief Executive Officer, Dizengoff West Africa (Nigeria) Ltd., Ritvonen Antti, has   identified finance to drive mechanisation as a big challenge in the country’s quest for agriculture development.

*Chief Executive Officer, Dizengoff West Africa (Nigeria) Ltd., Ritvonen Antti

Antti said that Nigeria has the potential of developing mechanisation in agriculture, but is behind other African countries.

“There are two major challenges in the development of mechanisation in Nigeria; one is the size of the farm and inability of government to give affordable finance to drive mechanisation.

“Recently, I read some statistics indicating that Nigeria has a deficit of over 100,000 tractors for mechainsation.

“If you compare the rest of Africa in terms of mechanisation; Nigeria is like half of what is obtainable from average. Nigeria is very far behind and we are in the very early stage of mechanisation.

“Not just tractors but I mean mechanisation needed in Nigeria, we are taking baby steps but obviously, we have to start from somewhere and Nigerian agriculture has so much potential,” he said.

The country manager said that smallholder farmers had only benefited from mechainsation by establishing cooperatives and clusters to create a bigger unit.

Antti added that a good tractor cost about N10 million and had prompted the firm to partner commercial banks to find solutions for customers.

He said: “You can get a good tractor from below N10 million and in line with this, we have been collaborating very closely with leading service providers in the country.

“We have been trying to work with banks and other financial institutions to find some finance solutions for the customer. I will say that we have yet to get some results from these banks.

“What we found out is that local and commercial banks are not really friendly when it comes to agriculture financing. The high demands that the banks are setting is a limitation.

“What the banks are requesting for is like 200 per cent guarantee from customers and that is huge. The banks are not ready to take any risk whatsoever and it is not sensible or reasonable.

“The kind of financing mechanised agriculture in Nigeria needs is huge and government finance, very often are complicated for the smaller farmer who does not have a lawyer.”

The country manager said mechanisation is still at low levels in Nigeria because training and knowledge of the farmers is another big limitation as many still use obsolete farming methods.

“Anything that improves the knowledge of the farmers is a plus because many farmers still use very old traditional methods. Dizengoff closely follows all the technical development in Nigeria.

“There is a lot of development which will improve the yields of farming but we are not looking at them holistically may be because Nigeria is not ready for all of them.

“There is a limited number of big commercial farms in Nigeria who can really use all these technology and knowledge.

“That is why we give training to our customers on how they can really use our equipment and machines to get the full benefits,” he said.

According to him, it is commendable that government is focusing on agriculture.