Small-scale potato farmers have tumbled their labour costs and multiplied their yields by using small and cheap potato planters.
Partial mechanisation of potato planting in Kenya saves up to 40 per cent in costs for farmers. This is because it reduces the number of manual labourers working on a two hectare farm from 75 to 15 labourers working on eight hectares per day. It also improves the germination of potatoes while reducing wastage during seed planting and fertiliser application while increasing potato harvests by up to 10 per cent, and decreasing after-harvest losses as much as 20 per cent as fewer potatoes are damaged during machine harvesting compared to manual harvests.
Despite all these benefits, most African potato farmers are locked out of mechanising as the big agricultural equipment used by farmers in developed nations is exorbitantly expensive and not practical for many on the continent who farm on less than one hectare.
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This market gap has seen a growing demand for small agriculture machinery from China, mini potato planters and harvesters included, which have found a ready market in many developing nations particularly India which imported 69.11 million dollars worth of machinery from China in 2019– 45.7 per cent of overall agricultural machinery imports.
According to research by CABI, the cost of operation of a two-row semiautomatic mini tractor-drawn potato planter is Sh2,413 per hectare, less than half the Sh5,074/ha it costs to run a medium-sized tractor-operated planter.
The planter which costs Sh39,817 places both planting potatoes and fertilise to their recommended depths. Mechanised seed sowing not only reduces the cost of manual labour and the loss of seed during manual planting but has also been shown to increase the germination rate of crops by 30 per cent more than when using manual methods.
Before it is taken to a field that has been prepared for potato sowing, the potato planter is attached to a mini tractor with a pin at its three-point linkage. A potato planter has two major components. A seed hopper and metering device that holds the maximum size of planting potatoes a farmer needs and also determines the panting distance between potatoes and a fertiliser hopper which contains a meter that measures the various fertilisers to be used.
Operating at a speed of 3.4 km/h, the mini tractor takes 7.14 man-hours to sow one hectare of potatoes. Compared to manual labor, where one worker can take up to 50 days to plant one hectare, the semiautomatic mini sower took just seven man-hours.
The planter also placed seeds at a depth of 6.94 cm which is ideal as potatoes are recommended to be planted at a five to 10 centimeter depth where there is enough soil moisture that ensures good germination.
The other semi-mechanised alternative options for small-scale farmers include one and two-row manual mini planters which cost up to Sh11,601-28,360 on Alibaba.
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It is similar in make to the mini tractor mounted potato planter only it requires a farm labourer to push it or a draught animal to pull it.
While it is slower than using a minitractor, by reducing the bending and manual digging involved in manual planting saving one-third to half of the time it takes to plant potatoes.
Largescale potato planters cost between Sh613,000 and 886,560 depending on whether they are locally assembled or imported and if they work on a single row or two rows simultaneously.