ADDIS ABABA – Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) has designed a pilot project under the title ‘Mechanization Service Cen – ter Enhancement’ to address the existing challenges of agricultural mechanization in the country.
The pilot project mainly aims at addressing major challenges such as lack of spare parts, high taxation of agricultural machineries, farm – ers’ lack of awareness in the utili – zation of agricultural machineries, shortage of trained agricultural machinery operators, facility and technicians for the maintenance and repair of machinery, according to ATA.
Gebre Gebretsadik, Mechani – zation Service Pilot Project Leader at ATA told The Ethiopian Herald, the agency has recognized the per – sistent problem in the Agricultural Mechanization Service and de – signed a pilot project that encom – passes the existing problems in the Pilot project to reinforce agricultural mechanization sector.
The project’s main purpose is to provide smallholder farmers access to affordable, fee-based agricultural mechanization services, in the key value chain activities such as plow – ing, planting, cultivation, harvest – ing/threshing through high-quality machinery and competent operators at affordable prices, he said.
According to him, a total of ten Mechanization Service Centers (MSCs) are in the process of estab – lishment in the four target regions at a pilot level with the objective of fulfilling the above services through different business models. These centers are to be linked to Agricultural Commercializa – tion Cluster (ACC) Woredas.
The project will have various capacity building interventions to enhance the capacity of the MSC centers, he added. “The ACC plays a favorable ground for agricultural mechaniza – tion. Farmers owning fragmented land are benefitted when their plots are clustered and this approach is suitable for agricultural mechaniza – tion,” he noted.
In addition to this, the Center will have ancillary services such as enhanced operator training in order to make field operations efficient, provide access to high quality and genuine/original spare parts, and provide timely maintenance sup – port of machinery to service pro – viders, he stated. Gebre also added the existing challenges are now slightly allevi – ated with greater priority from the government to improve mechani – zation and from the involvement of the private sector in dealerships.
Demands for the service are emerging in many areas due to fac – tors such as seasonality and rain dependent of the agricultural opera – tions, shortage of labor in peak sea – sons. The number of private service providers is increasing gradually with more concentration of ma – chines in wheat and barley growing parts of Oromia, Sesame belt of Amhara and Tigray and some parts of SNNPR, he said.
The Ethiopian Herald, December 20/2018
BY ESSEYE MENGISTE
