The Federal Government on Tuesday said the country needed no less than 60,000 tractors to go into full mechanisation within the next few years.
This is just as the government said it has perfected plan to partner the Brazilian government to establish tractor manufacturing and assembly plant in Nigeria.
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mohammed Sabo Nanono, stated this when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts to defend a loan request of €995,000,000 by President Muhammadu Buhari to finance agricultural projects in the country.
He expressed worries that the country is currently cultivating less than 30% of its agrarian landmass, which is far below what is needed to feed its over 200 million population.
“Obviously, how do we go about feeding this nation. It is very clear that the current method of farming will not do it. So we have to go into mechanisation.
“You must know as at today we have only about seven tractors per 100 square kilometers. A standard is one 120 tractors per 100 square kilometers,” the Minister explained, adding that Nigeria needs an average of “sixty thousand tractors” for the purpose of food security.
According to him, a new programme, the Green Imperative Project which is intended to promote industrialisation “would provide 10,000 tractors in the next three years and another 10,000 tractors in another tree years.
He revealed that service centers would be established across all the local government areas in the country with presence of tractors, hired skills and stores to support local productivity and job creation, which would be private sector-driven with the government playing a crucial roles in key areas.
