The National Centre for Agricultural Mechanisation (NCAM), Ilorin, Kwara State, has designed a mini-tractor that performs all the functions of the conventional tractors.
Speaking with The Guardian on the development in Ilorin, the Executive Director of the institute, AbdulGafar Kamaldeen, said the mini tractor, which is cost effective, would fill the existing tractor gap needs in the country’s agriculture space.
Besides, he said the centre could make available enough mini tractors for the entire council areas of the federation, adding that the development will increase food capacity of Nigeria and boost the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country.
One of the core mandates of the institute is the inspection and certification for use of imported tractors into Nigeria.
Kamaldeen said: “The mini tractor is the product of the ingenuity of our staff. It performs every function that the conventional tractor performs. With more facilities, we can rise to the challenges of manufacturing for each of the LGAs in the country. Indeed, Nigeria is blessed with resources and personnel of high qualities.”
The Executive Director added that the centre developed mini tractors while considering the financial constraints posed by the price and size of a conventional tractor on farmers, especially, small and medium scale farmers.
The mini tractors are three and four-wheeled, designed to perform similar operations as a conventional tractor but on a smaller scale. It has been tested in various agro-ecological zones of the country.
The centre, according to Kamaldeen, has equally built the NCAM multi-crop thresher, which is a compact thresher with a multi-crop potential, aimed at increasing threshing efficiency and eliminating diced associated with the traditional method of threshing with stick. The machine has the capacity to thresh rice, sorghum, maize and cowpea.
While regretting the low patronage towards the institutes’ machineries, he urged agric experts, states and local councils to use more of the institute’s manufactured and fabricated facilities.
