Harvesting and ploughing made easy

Micheal Okello is a maize farmer in Adjumani District in Northern Uganda. He recalls that when he was venturing into farming, he started out on a smallscale where it was all about growing food for his family.

After ensuring that his family had enough stocked food, he would sell off the surplus to put some money in his pocket.
“After providing home food and sold the surplus, I would make about Shs1m per season and when I realised that I could make more money, I decided to increase on the size of land. This meant that family labour was not sufficient to plough and harvest the gardens. I decided to hire labourers and paid each Shs5,000 to each of the 10 labourers hired every harvesting season,” Okello, who has been a maize farmer for the past seven years, recalls. This meant that he spent Shs50,000 each day he hired labourers.

Ploughing reaper
“After a learning visit at a friend’s farm in Gulu, I realised he was saving time and energy by using a ploughing and harvesting tractor to reduce on farm costs incurred. I had to save for two years to acquire a tractor,” Okello adds.
Another millet farmer, Emmanuel Drabe in Yumbe District in Northern Uganda equally prides in using the ploughing tractor on his millet farm.

The approximately two acres of land where he grows millet have since increased to three because he is now able to plough more land and have his harvest in the shortest time possible.
“It would take about two weeks for five farm workers to harvest two acres of land using hand knives. After acquiring a harvesting reaper, it takes me utmost two days and the land is ready for ploughing again to prepare for another season,” Drabe says.

Douglas Opio, the Sales Manager at China North Machine along Jinja Road that sells ploughing and harvesting tractors, which are also sometimes called reapers, says it is built with a diesel engine and comes with three gears for effective output.
Just like a motorcycle, Opio says the tractor is also manually operated by pushing to guide the direction of the blades when ploughing, tilling and harvesting.
The two gears are used to move it forward while the third gear is for enabling the reaper make reverse on the farm.