Role of Agricultural Mechanization Technologies in Transforming Agriculture: The Case of Wheat Row Planter in Ethiopia

Abstract

Wheat is one of the major staple food crops in many parts of Ethiopia covering about 11% of total land cultivated and production share of 17% of total cereals. However, land productivity is found to be among the lowest in the country from the world which is about 2.01tons/ha. To increase this lowest productivity, among all others, good agronomic practices is the most important and to facilitate this practice row planting was the one major action to be taken by farmers. But even though farmers were convinced to practice row planting, absence of appropriate technology was the most bottlenecks for development. To overcome the problem considerable researchers and individuals were engaged to development and adaptation of wheat row planters. However, before the embark of mass production and wider dissemination of the technologies, technical viability and socioeconomic feasibility of the technologies and selection of the best out of the options was found to be crucial activity. Therefore, this research activity was initiated to verify available prototypes for wheat row planting and recommend suitable ones for further demonstration and scaling up. Accordingly, seven row planters were collected from different sources in the country and on field evaluation were conducted in Tiyo district, Arsi zone with the presence of FRG during the major activities like planting, cultivation/weeding and harvesting and threshing. All necessary data from planting to harvest was collected. In addition to these different field days were organized to incorporate farmers’ and experts’ comments to strengthen the field data. Farmers’ preferences, technical viability and economic data analysis using partial budgeting technique and Gross Social Return were assessed and OARI-AAMRC type wheat row planter was ranked superior to others in all aspects.