To boost farm productivity and their earnings, farmers buy or rent agricultural machinery, but the pace of farm mechanisation is slow for a host of reasons. Scant financial resources, power crisis, uncertain returns on crops, undeveloped network of farms-to-market roads and slow growth of agribusinesses keep the use of machinery limited.

Initiatives of provincial governments like subsidising tractors and tubewells have made things a bit easier for agricultural mechanisation. Private sector companies and big landowners also rent out machinery. But it may take some years before a majority of 8.3m farmers can mechanise their operations, growers say.

Mechanisation in agriculture increases productivity of the land and labour, helps in sustaining farm output growth and brings in higher profits.

By raising productivity, farm mechanisation needs to be sped up to provide a cushion to our vulnerable external sector and accelerate GDP growth. “But so far we haven’t developed a national perspective on mechanisation and most of the developments in this area are taking place on their own nmomentum. As a result, neither the mechanisation potential has been captured fully nor the gaps have been identified nor responsibilities assigned for further action.”

Currently less than 10pc of agricultural credit is offered

for development purposes, including purchase of machinery and farm inputs

Pakistan is among major producers of wheat, rice and sugarcane but in all the three crops the per-hectare yield is not only below the world’s average but far lower the regional countries. For example, the per-hectare yield of wheat is about 2.8 tonnes, far lower than China’s 4.7 tonnes and its milled rice yield of 2.4 tonnes lower than even Bangladesh’s 2.9 tonnes.

One of the reasons behind lower yield of crops is scant, infrequent and inconsistent use of machinery on farms. Most farmers use tractors and even less-expensive machinery like thresher, sheller and combined harvesters on rent and only a thin affluent minority of them have their own machinery, according to agricultural statistical yearbook. In FY11, the area cultivated with tractors owned by the farmers was 409,000 hectares or just 6.2pc of the total 6.62m hectares. The remaining 93.8pc of the farmland was cultivated with tractors rented for this purpose.

Officials of the provincial agriculture departments point out that subsidised sale of tractors in the last three years is believed to have changed this ratio for the better. “But still no more than 10pc of farmers all over Pakistan should be using their own tractors,” guesstimates a senior official of the Ministry of National Food Security and Research.

Regardless of whether tractors being used on farm are owned or rented by farmers, ‘the issue is, many small farmers still cultivate their land with traditional oxen-driven ploughs.’ The same applies to the use of other machinery including the most crucial tubewells. In many rural areas, we still see water-wells and a labyrinth of traditional natural water courses meandering into crop fields, veggies’ farms and fruit orchards.

One example of how much importance the policymakers attach to mechanisation of agriculture can be found in the annual economic survey, where the only thing mentioned about mechanisation is the number of tractors produced in the country. No more, no less!

Despite this, the journey of mechanisation of agriculture goes on—thanks to private sector’s involvement, growing business of food processing companies and increase in rural income levels on the back of the swift upward revisions of food crops’ support prices.

Officials of the agriculture departments say, and growers testify that from FY11 (the year for which data on agricultural mechanisation is available) the use of machinery in agriculture has picked up pace. Not only the number of tractors and front-end loaders have increased and solar-powered tubewells become more common but wheat and maize threshers, potato diggers and water bowsers and sprinklers are also being increasingly used on the farms. Similarly, increasingly large number of farmers are now using disc ploughs and mould-board ploughs, double-action reap blades, boom-sprayers, fertiliser spreaders, centre pivot irrigation systems, gleaners and grain-dryers etc.

Growers say three things are required to gear up agricultural mechanisation drive: the share of development loans in agricultural credit needs to be increased, taxation policies affecting prices of agricultural machinery need to be made affordable and a mechanism must be evolved to appreciate those farmers who obtain higher per-unit outputs. Currently less than 10pc of agricultural credit is offered for development purposes including purchase of machinery and inputs. Lowering of sales tax on tractors and then increasing it the following year is a recent example of inconsistent taxation policies.

Many years ago, Sindh agriculture department had coined a honorary term of progressive farmers who used to get above-average per-acre yields of wheat, cotton, rice and sugarcane. “These growers were regularly invited in official meetings to give their inputs and were taken into confidence before formulating agricultural policies,” recalls a progressive cotton grower from Nawabshah. “But sadly, such practices are dying.”

Published in Dawn, Aug 4th, 2014