Mechanization and agribusiness.

Mechanization is an essential tool for success of agribusiness as it improves productivity and profits farmers. Farmers need to embrace the role of farm machinery if they are to be successful,but many smallscale farmers are yet to imbibe the emerging farming technologies and machinery. Factors, such as the high cost of machines and farmers’ lack of access to finance, make the machinery unaffordable for resource-poor farmers. Farmers are calling for a change, one of them is Debo Thomas, a large scale farmer in Ogbomosho, Oyo State. His community has a strong agricultural tradition – nearly two-thirds of its population are farmers. Though he uses agricultural machinery to plant and harvest crops, he is among those canvassing the introduction of cheap, easy-to-operate and easy-to-maintain tractors that can be fitted to a various innovative auxiliary equipment for planting, threshing and irrigation.continue