The firm is currently investing heavily and partnering with some tractors assemblers in the country to get enough farming machines on its platforms for its farmers.
With the initiative, Origin will be able to support the country in addressing its mechanisation problems by ensuring that farmers easily access tractors to perform timely farming operations and achieve economies of scale in food production.
“We have launched our tractor hailing service so that farmers in the country irrespective of where they are located can order for tractors using their mobile phones,” Prince S.J Samuel, president, Origin Group said.
“We hope to address the issues around mechanisation in Nigeria and Africa at large,” Samuel said.
He stated that the firm already has over 1,000 tractors on board and would increase the numbers as demand rises.
The firm also has established tractor service centres across the six geo-political zones for servicing and maintenance and it plans to replicate it across every local government area of the country.
The centres are solar-powered and provide other support to farmers such as training, after sale repairs and inputs.
According to the organisation, the centre will provide a complete farming support to smallholder farmers where they are located.
When measured in 2003 by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), 17 years ago, Nigeria had only 30,000 tractors.
African largest economy is currently adding 1,000 new ones each year, which is still not considered sufficient in replacing the aging, worn out, and broken down ones.
This means on a per capita basis, Nigeria ranks 132nd out of the 188 countries worldwide measured by FAO / United Nations in terms of the number of tractors in the country.
Nigeria has fewer tractors than minnow countries like Serbia & Montenegro, with 400,000, Pakistan with 320,000, or Uzbekistan with 170,000 tractors.
But, it is not that Nigerian farmers are not interested in using tractors; they are faced with some challenges that limit their use.
With the OAW app – TOGWorld, Nigerian farmers who have in the past struggled to get tractors can now have fast and reliable options to get machines for their farmland.
Samuel said access to mechanisation would reduce drudgery and promote sustainable agronomical practices.
He said farmers needed greater access to affordable yield-enhancing inputs to increase productivity, profitability, and sustainability of their farms.
Olakunle Dabiri, general manager, OAW, said the company’s primary focus was the provision of advanced mechanisation technology solutions aimed at eliminating the persistent high human drudgery by providing manufacturing, sales, and servicing of farm machinery.
In line with this, the company established the Origin Automobile Internship Programme to train and develop a home-grown team of agric engineers and other professionals for local manufacture, support, and development of tractors.
The programme, which involves local and foreign, runs for three months and the graduates are taking through rigorous, qualitative and hands-on training on the assembly, diagnosis, maintenance, and repairs of agricultural machines.
The firm inducted 50 graduates who were selected from 3,000 applications and plans to induct a total of 150 before the end of the year.
Dabiri noted that the aim of the graduate internship programme is to move the firm from its current status of assembling tractors imported in semi-knocked –down ( SKD) forms into a completely-knocked-down (CKD) form.
He said the programme gives participants the know-how and confidence to start their business, adding that there is a market for farming mechanisation services.
