Scaling Agricultural Mechanization Services in Smallholder Farming System
There is great Unstoppable potential for farm mechanization to support rural development initiatives in low- and middle-income countries. As technology transfer of large machinery from high-income countries was ineffective during the late 1980s and 90s, mechanization options were developed convenient to resource-poor farmers cultivating small and distributed plots. quite recently, projects that aim to increase the acceptance of farm machinery have been made to target service providers rather than individual farmers.
Digitalization in Agricultural Mechanization is The Need, Not an Option
There is great Unstoppable potential for farm mechanization to support rural development initiatives in low- and middle-income countries. As technology transfer of large machinery from high-income countries was ineffective during the late 1980s and 90s, mechanization options were developed convenient to resource-poor farmers cultivating small and distributed plots. quite recently, projects that aim to increase the acceptance of farm machinery have been made to target service providers rather than individual farmers. This paper uses the Scaling Scan tool to assess three project case studies designed to scale different Mechanization Service Provider Models in Mexico, Zimbabwe, and Bangladesh. It provides a useful framework to assess the gap between international lessons learned on scaling captured in forty tactical questions over ten “scaling ingredients” as recognized by stakeholders involved in the projects, as well as private sector actors and government employees.
Although at first sight, the case studies seem to successfully reach high numbers of end-users, the assessment exposes issues around the sustainable and transformational nature of the interference. These are highly influenced by the design of the projects and by the environment and context of the interference areas. and extract nearly USD six million of private sector investment in appropriate machinery in Bangladesh. On the other hand, there is still a high dependency on the projects in terms of coaching of service providers, facilitating collaboration along the value chain, and provision of leadership and advocacy to address issues at the governance level. These results have important implications for similar development interventions aimed at increasing smallholder access to mechanization services at scale and are to our knowledge the first cross-continental assessment of these issues.
Agricultural mechanization as a vehicle for positive rural transformation
Agricultural mechanization is the continued introduction of farm equipment to make activities such as land preparation, crop production, harvesting, processing, and transport of goods more efficient. Increases in resource use efficiency, as well as labor and land productivity, are achieved through higher precision and timely operations, reduced drudgery, and overall savings in labor, leading to a higher quality of life.
Challenges for smallholders to access mechanization
The most common challenges to increasing smallholder access to appropriate mechanization include a mismatch between the economies of scale of machines and farm size. More than 50% of globally produced food originates from small family farms, and many of these consist of separate and dispersed fields and thus are poorly suited for larger machinery. Cost of machinery. In many countries, farmers cannot afford to purchase equipment and financial support through subsidies or finance schemes are limited. The financial-service sector shies away from providing credit to smallholders because of a lack of eligible collateral and perception of the high risk involved with agriculture.
Appropriate mechanization
The development and testing of “appropriate” mechanization options for smallholder farmers address the first three challenges listed above. Appropriate refers to user-friendly machinery tailored to smallholders' fields and suitable to local agronomic circumstances and limited resource endowments. The technologies are designed to have minimal negative social and environmental consequences.
Service models to access appropriate mechanization
Despite the small scale and increased affordability of many appropriate mechanization options increasing smallholder access to machinery on a large scale remains challenging. However, smallholders can benefit from the use of machinery through low-cost rental or service providers and hiring arrangements that reduce farmers' individual cost burdens of purchasing, owning, and maintaining machines. Nonetheless, these options can come with increased transaction costs that require offsets and appropriate accounting for in the respective business models. Further, service provider arrangements can enable farmers who own and operate machines to become rural entrepreneurs by using machinery for remunerative on- and off-farm activities.
