• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Invited paper presented at the 6th African Conference of Agricultural Economists, September 23-26, 2019, Abuja, Nigeria Copyright 2019 by [authors]. All rights reserved. Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies. Farm power transition and access in Senegal: Patterns and constraints Getaw Tadessea, Anatole Goundanb and Saer Sarrc aAfrica Region, International Food Policy Research Institute, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia bAfrica region, International Food Policy Research Institute, Dakar, Senegal c Macroeconomic Analysis Office of the Senegalese Institute for Agricultural Research Abstract This paper aims at documenting evidences on the patterns and constraints affecting the sequential and simultaneous transition of farm power use from manual to animal to engine. It also aims at exploring access to farm equipment through ownership and rental service. Based on a household data collected under the huge and ambitious project called ‘Senegal Agricultural Policy Project’, the result generally confirms the very low use of farm machinery powered by engines despite years of efforts to support agricultural mechanization programs. However, the use of improved farm equipment powered by animals has shown a sharp increase overtime. The study further demonstrated the variation of constraints in farm mechanization transitions defined by sources of power. While demand side constraints such as farm size and off-farm income are more important for machineries than animal plows, supply-side constraints such as rental overhead costs and membership to a producer’s organization are very critical for transition to engine power through facilitating rental service which is the dominant source of access to heavy machineries. Based on these findings, we discussed the strategic interventions that are needed to enhance and sustain agricultural mechanization uptakes in Senegal. Keywords: Senegal - Farm mechanization - West Africa - Exploitation 1 INTRODUCTION Despite many years of efforts to transform the African agriculture through improved agricultural mechanization, the use of engine-powered farm equipment remains very low. Engine-powered machines currently cover only 10% of the total power for land preparation in Sub-Saharan Africa (Side, 2013). Historically, the use of machinery in agriculture in Africa in general had been increasing until the 1980’s structural reforms (Houmy, et al, 2013). Th initial trend was motivated by the emergence of colonization that brought improved equipment for large scale farming. After independence, many governments had interventions to motivate smallholder producers through subsidies and government owned enterprises for the production, importation and maintained of machineries. However, following the 1980’s structural reforms, the trend has been declining overtime. A similar trend has been witnessed in Senegal where the use of motorized farm equipment is below the sub-Saharan African average. Currently, a renewed strong policy interest is waging across African countries including Senegal to recap the declined use of tractor and other machines across the agricultural value chains (MaMo, 2018; Diao et al., 2016). This policy interest is motivated by the need to enhance agricultural transformation as part of the overall economic growth and transformation strategy; increased wage rate associated to the recent economic growth; and the innovation of farm mechanization that fits to the smallholders’ context and uses other sources of power such as wind and solar (Houmy, et al, 2013). Mechanization is supposed to transform agriculture through improved productivity, minimized production cost and reduced post-harvest loses (Pengali, 2007). As a result, many African countries revised their agricultural development strategies and mechanization has returned as an important development agenda. In Senegal, several programs such as the National Food Security Support Program (PNASA) in 2003; the Accelerated Growth Strategy (ACS) in 2005 and the National Rice Self-Sufficiency Program (PNAR) have been initiated to implement the national intensification and diversification of national agricultural production strategy. Since then several other programs including the 2014 Senegalese Agricultural Acceleration Program (PRACAS) were developed and agricultural mechanization has been one of the priority agenda to achieve stated goals and targets (MAER, 2014). However, the planning, strategizing and investment in agricultural mechanization is challenged by several conceptual and empirical puzzles. The most important question that attracts the attention of agricultural strategy planners and researchers alike is “How to encourage and expand the adoption of large-scale and emerging small-scale farm machineries by smallholder farmers?”. A recent research conducted in Ethiopia has found that mechanization is associated with significantly lower labor use, and higher yields—specifically the use of combine harvester—seemingly due to lower post-harvest losses (Berhane, 2017). The study further highlights that the expansion of mechanization is being hampered by farm structures, fragmented plots, crop diversity, physical constraints, such as presence of stones, steepness of fields, and soil types; and economic and financial constraints. In Senegal, a study has been conducted to assess the upper and midstream value chain of farm mechanization (CRES, 2018). This study has abled to estimate the number of firms involved in import, production, maintenance, and distribution of farm equipment across the country. It also evaluated the challenges and opportunities of the firms to supply the equipment and provide the services. However, a comprehensive study on uptakes and drivers of farm mechanization at farmers level is lacking. More specifically, the question “Which constraint is important to which type of farm 2 mechanization transition and access?” remains unanswered. The definition to farm mechanization depends on the type of energy sources—animal and engine; type of farm operations—plowing, seeding, harvesting, threshing; and the size of the equipment—small scale and heavy machineries. Since the transition from manual to animal to engine power is a structural change, the patterns and constraints along the adoption pathways could be different. In this paper, we focus on the downstream of the farm mechanization based on a data collected from the two farming systems. Namely, the irrigated rice production farming systems and the dry cereal production farming systems. Using this farm level data, we assessed two important concerns. First, we examined the patterns of farm power transition from manual to animal to machinery. In this regard, the study demonstrated the very low use of farm mechanization, but with significant variation across regions and farming systems. Second, we explored whether the demand and supply side constraints affect farm power transition from manual to animal to machinery differently. We tested if the supply side constraints such as rental services are more important for transition from animal power to heavy machineries than for transition from manual to animal drawn equipment for which access to cash is important to purchase the equipment privately. Similarly, we examined whether the demand side constraints such as farm size affects machineries and animal tractions differently or not. By doing so, the paper aims to contribute to the general understanding of how farm mechanization must be strategized for small scale farmers in Africa. It could trigger discussion on strategic choice of enhancing small-scale farm machineries through equipment ownership or enhancing large-scale machineries through equipment rental service. Before presenting the results of the study, we explore the policy reforms and directions that Senegal has gone through to enhance the uptakes of farm equipment and transform the sector. In this case, we reviewed the policy initiatives made since the colonial period to the current time. Following this section, we describe the analytical methods used to estimate the pattern and rates of uptake as well as demand and supply ide constraints. The fourth section describes the data collected and used for the study. The fifth section presents the results of the findings. Finally, we summarize the major findings and forward strategic interventions that are needed to enhance and sustain the adoption of agricultural mechanization in Senegal. Farm equipment introduction and supply in Senegal Introduction of farm equipment Since 1900, several agricultural equipment has been introduced in Senegalese agriculture. The first attempt is the introduction of improved animal drawn equipment during the colonial period. Between 1898 and 1901, several types of animal drawn plows were tested at Mbaba (near Tivaouane), Bambey, Kaolack, etc., by Perruchot and his team. From this experiment, equipment such as the Fondeur plow, Oliver plow, Algerian plow Amiot and Bariat, have had satisfactory results (see examples, Figure 1). The Bajac Lever Extractor and the universal E. Puzenat Exopper have also been tried because they were considered as more practical in the preparation of light soil for peanuts. These are cutters equipped with dethatching blades or vibrating blades. Next to animal plows, the Parisian house Pilter has designed and introduced a hand seeder for peanut sowing but also for other seeds such as millet. Though the seeder e has not been widely

Load more

  21

Copy Link