The National Chairman of the Rice Millers Association of Nigeria, Peter Dama, has said many farmers and millers are unable to take advantage of the Federal Government’s agricultural mechanisation drive because they lack the financial capacity to purchase equipment.

Dama said although efforts to improve mechanisation were ongoing, the high cost of equipment and the prevailing economic situation had discouraged many operators from participating.

“The process is on, but people are not really going in there for it because the amount, the money, where is the money? People don’t have the money to really go buy all those things because things are very expensive,” he said.

He urged the government to focus on affordable mechanisation options that would benefit smallholder farmers, particularly irrigation equipment and small-scale tractors. “We told them that the truth of this matter is, you can do mechanisation by supplying, you know, solar pumps for irrigation.

“You can also get small tiller tractors or tillers that you can use for farming. They use very little fuel to till your ground, to till your farm. Those are some of the things that people are going into, and you can see a lot of Chinese and Japanese people are bringing in those small tiller tools.”

Speaking on the state of the rice milling industry, Dama said large and medium-scale operators were facing significant challenges due to rising production costs, while smaller millers were coping better because of their relatively lower operating expenses.

“The industry is not doing very well. In particular, when it comes to the very big, medium, and big millers. The smaller millers, yes, they are because their production cost is not as high. And you know what the situation is about electricity and energy in this country. Petrol is expensive, diesel is expensive.”

He also expressed concern over the financial burden of implementing the new minimum wage, arguing that many businesses were struggling with rising operational costs.

“And when people begin to talk of minimum wage, 70,000, people are complaining. Because where is the money? For them, if, for example, you have 20 or 30 staff and you are paying 70,000 naira, where is the money for you to pay 70,000 naira?” he asked.

On access to tractors, Dama said financing remained a major obstacle for most farmers, adding that only wealthy farmers or cooperatives with members in the same location could realistically benefit from tractor acquisition schemes.

“Bank of Industry is the people I know who are in charge of anything tractor-related. Except the bigger, richer farmers. Unless you come up with a cooperative, pulling your resources together. So if you’re pulling your resources together, unless you are in one location.

“But in a situation like our association, somebody is in Niger, somebody is in Enugu, somebody is in Calabar, somebody is in Kaduna. How can you come as a cooperative association to say you pull your money together? Because if I am in Niger, I want the tractor, after contributing my money, to come and work for me.”

He maintained that despite government efforts to promote mechanisation, inadequate financing continues to limit participation by farmers across the country. “The tractorisation thing is a problem. People don’t have the money.”

President Bola Tinubu in June 2025 launched the Renewed Hope National Agricultural Mechanisation Programme, unveiling 2,000 tractors, 10 combine harvesters, 12 mobile workshops and more than 9,000 agricultural implements procured under a partnership with Belarus.

The government said the programme, to be implemented through a service-provider model rather than direct ownership by farmers, is expected to support more than 550,000 farming households, cultivate over 500,000 hectares of farmland annually and boost food production nationwide.

Although the tractors were unveiled in June 2025, their deployment did not commence immediately. The Federal Government later handed implementation of the programme to the Bank of Agriculture, which said the delay was deliberate to establish a transparent and sustainable framework for allocation, maintenance, and repayment rather than distributing the equipment indiscriminately.

The bank subsequently opened applications, received more than 100,000 expressions of interest from mechanisation service providers and formally commenced distribution under the Renewed Hope National Agricultural Mechanisation Programme in February 2026.