The importance of using agricultural tools

While farmers in the developed world have been empowered by the use of machinery in their day-to-day activities, those in developing world are still practicing rudimentary farming.

Yet mechanised agriculture is now being emphasised as the way forward.
Powered machinery has replaced many jobs formerly carried out by manual labour and by animal traction with oxen and horses.
But the latter is still useful to most farmers in developing countries including Uganda.

To enable farmers and agro business enterprises to flow with the ever fluctuating agricultural sector, it is very important for government to lease agricultural equipment for a given duration to farmers.

Some of the equipment that can be leased to farmers includes: tractors, hay balers, different seed-planting machines and harvesters.

Other machinery for animal farming includes: graders, cattle truck, small tractors and combine harvesters.
However there are companies dealing in farm equipment mainly for sale to individual small scale farmers and those dealing in large scale commercial farming in Uganda and in the Eastern and Southern region.

Agro equipment
One such a company is Davis and Shirtliff dealers in water and energy solutions equipment.
Some of the agriculture equipment supplied in all the East African countries including Zambia are irrigation equipment such as sprinklers, drip lines and center pivot irrigation equipment among others.

Sprinklers can be located in the various spots of the farm to sprinkle water evenly in the entire farm while drip lines run throughout the farm with small outlets to allow water drop to the soil.

Ephraim Wainaina, the managing director at Davis and Shirtliff explaining about the agro equipment business in Uganda, notes that it is important for farmers to utilise the various types of equipment in a bid to practice commercial agriculture.

The company has selling outlets in Mbarara, Gulu, Jinja and the head office in Kampala is located along Jinja road at Kitgum house, Shauri Yako market down town and at JR complex 3rd street industrial area.

The prices
The price of the farm equipment ranges from Shs200,000 to Shs150m depending on the type.
According to Wainaina, a farmer who uses farm equipment especially those used for irrigation stands an advantage of harvesting crops all year.

“Farmers growing various types of crops ranging from large scale commercial farming growing maize, green vegetables and fruits in drought stricken areas will stand a chance to harvest the normal yield capacity if they engage in utilizing irrigation equipment supplied by the company,” says Wainaina.
The company has been in the market for the last 21 years.

Apart from supplying farm equipment, they deal in energy and water supplying equipment.
“There are products which are new in the market and one such is the energy saving optimized water pump. It uses the traditional pump booster powered by solar energy where one or more pumps are operated at all times based on the pressure value which is selected to meet the peak water demands,” he explains.

According to Wainaina, such a pump can be used by farmers keeping cattle for pumping water for their animals as well as for irrigation.

Davis and Shirtliff also offers borehole equipment and this according to Wainaina is important for farmers who can afford to drill water underground for home consumption and smallscale irrigation schemes using water cans.

Other services include offering electric, petrol and diesel-powered generators for a wide selection of uses, ranging from small domestic to large institutional applications.

In addition they provide engines suitable for powering water pumps.
These include Honda, Lister, Perkins, Lovol, Foton and Lombardini brands plus high-powered diesel generators and electric generators suitable for water pumps.