The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, FMA&FS Abubakar Kyari, has expressed concern over the delay in the delivery of 2,000 tractors to farmers in Nigeria.
Kyari expressed his worries in Abuja on Wednesday while speaking with John Deere, the agricultural equipment manufacturer, over the slow pace in supplying the first batch of 500 tractors into the country.
Earlier in November 2023, the federal government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with John Deere for the supply of 2,000 tractors annually for the next five years.
However, the minister said there is no record of the supply of tractors from John Deere, emphasizing that to increase agricultural yields, there was a need for tractors, essentially for ramping up the production of food.
He said, The only concern that I have and we have here at the ministry is that there seems to be a slow pace in some of the concepts that we have lined out.
But here we are, we are a bit stuck in the mud and we want to run away from all the problems that we have envisaged in the past. And if there are any naughty areas that we need to look at, we need to do it assiduously.
We are challenged as a nation and the land is shrinking; hence we need to increase yield. We are under-tractorised right now as a country. And I think any journey begins with a step. So, if you have taken this step, you should commend the Federal Government for taking this step.
The Managing Director, John Deere, Stephan Gouws, told the minister, So the challenge that we see is that the yields are there but it is sub-optimal. So, we have to increase those yields with the land we have. However, access to finance is the biggest stumbling block for us.
Gouws noted that the goal of his firm was to increase yield through optimal technology and in delivering the tractors once the last couple of hurdles were crossed.
