Mechanization of Agricultural Production in Developing Countries

Abstract

Agriculture is a main source of income, employment, and livelihood of a significant proportion of the populations of developing countries. Agricultural mechanization has now been in progress for several decades. However, it has been mainly confined to developed countries and a small number of developing countries. Some of the developing nations have had little or no progress in this area of agriculture production until recent times. Particularly, in sub-Saharan Africa, where 65% of agriculture is still carried out by manual labor, 25% by animal traction, and only 10% is mechanized (Esdaile, 2016). This is compared with the rapidly improved situation in countries like China,Sri Lanka, and Cambodia. Mechanization of agricultural production requires the applications of modern technologies. These technologies, however, are generally associated with relatively well-developed economies or largescale farms. The application of these technologies in many developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are limited by factors such as the technology’s compatibility with the environment, availability of resources to facilitate the technology’s adoption, cost of the technology, government policies, adequacy of the technology, and appropriateness in addressing the needs of the population. As a result, many of the available resources have been inadequately used by farmers. This has led to low productivity and high cost of production.