1. Ask any crop farmer out there and they'll tell you that at the moment, their biggest challenge is labour, not even capital. Since we're still heavily dependent on human labour in practise for farm operations in this part of the world with limited mechanisation means, we have
2. to depend on farm workers especially from neighboring African countries like Togo, Benin Republic, Burkina Faso, Ghana etc to carry out farm activities. And lately due to unfavourable socio-economic situation as triggered by the recently experienced cashless policy & election,
3. they significantly limited the availability of the usual farm workers often contracted through agents who source them into Nigeria from those countries. Now many farmers have been forced to indefinitely suspend farm operations till availability of labour or reduce their
4. investment scale this year. Already some of us are turning down farm projects due to this same reason because without labour in the form of a full time committed worker, it's nothing short of stress.
The lasting solution to this challenge of labour is the systemic
The lasting solution to this challenge of labour is the systemic
5. mechanisation of agricultural operations which would make available for small, medium and large scale farm machinery for all type of farmers which would significantly reduce the need for human labour. With this, you could have light scale machinery for land preparation,
6. planting, harvesting, weeding and the likes that can do more in less time with minimal human effort. Through this, the need to engage many human labour on your farm is cut off as you can have one person operating a simple planting machine that'll cover 10 acres in a
7. day or two, instead of the usual engagement of 4-5 persons to carry out the same operation in even more number of days. With this, many farmers in particular would be able to do more activities in less time and with minimal resources.
8. And in economics, when you're able to optimise limited inputs to get maximum outputs, then you're already plotting your graph of profit, especially consistently.
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