In 1980, my mother was the first person to engage a tractor for ploughing services as it was not common those days. There was actually one tractor in the whole of Gabane and Mr Monga Chalebgwa was charging P5 p/ha. That looked like a lot of money but my parent liked the efficiency of the machine.
This was the beginning of the transition from the ox drawn plough to the multiple plough drawn by the tractor. The odds were clearly against the beast as machines could clear a whole field in one day as opposed to a span of oxen which would do a 5 ha field in four to five days. This was also a transition from the acre metrics to the hactor.
The coming of the tractor was supposed to have improved harvest yields but there is very little evidence that these machines did. The problem has been with urbanization, as tractors came in, the new generation moved away from their rural setting to work in towns. Because of urbanization, this country has moved from being a nett food exporter and has transitioned into a nett importer even on some of the most basic food commodities.
Through the aid of the ox as draught power, this country became a major bean exporter. Beans were more or less the staple food in the gold mines of the Witwatersrand. A majority of the labour there was made of Africans and beans were the right food needed to provide the protein. Even then, cattle were exported live to Johannesburg and were slaughtered for the miners. Agriculture was providing meaningful employment to the population and Batswana were at the time, small commercial farmers.
With the advent of the tractor, our output as a nation should have tripled. Tractors as means of mechanization did free a lot of labour to be engaged into other more meaningful economic activities such as education. The arrival of the tractor actually helped with an increase in school enrolment. Fewer hands were needed at the plough.
Four decades later, the tractor has now come to define arable agriculture in Botswana. This in a sense has become our national machine or symbol of agriculture. For some reason, we are failing to realise that the tractor stands between us and the nearest point of starvation. This is why the government has not treated these men and women with the respect they deserve over the years.
For more than five years now, government subsidy for tractor owners who plough for others has been standing at P1 160. In the true meaning of the word, subsidy means that the other portion is being paid by the other party. Right from the beginning, farmers should have been paying a part over this figure.
Currently the price of diesel as the main fuel for tractors has gone up by almost two hundred percent in a year and this has been driven largely by the war between Russia and Ukraine. This is a war that is affecting supply lines of energy and food as well. While fuel costs have gone up, the need for food has also gone up and this deficit needs to be closed locally and that will take the involvement of tractor owners.
To begin with, government should be considering bringing down the cost of diesel by a significant figure. As prices stand, we are heading for a big disaster in as far as food production and security is concerned. Most tractor owners are seating back and vowing not to participate in the current ploughing and planting season and they are citing fuel prices as their major reason. In fact for years now, the price of fuel has serious eroded any profits made in this industry.
Some tractor owners have increased their prices for the services they render. They are passing the cost to the farmer. The prices range from a reasonable P1 600 per ha to a crazy one like P3 341 p/ha. The organized tractor owners known as Botswana Tractor Association are the ones who are asking to conduct daylight robbery on the farmer.
The association is arguing that with that fee charged, that is when they can manage to recover their costs and make a decent profit. Even though what they asking has blown the roof off, the truth of the matter is that what government is paying is far below their recovery point. But the bottom line is that we need to understand that to be a subsidy.
It is sad how government is treating this whole affair that is key to food security. Tractor owners outside of this association need to treated with some decency. In any case most tractors owners are not members of this association and are hearing about it now.
In places like Lentsweletau where government has a fleet of tractors intended at performing functions of agricultural demonstration, the machines have been lying there for years unused due to lack of spare parts. Machinery is literally rotting there because there are no tractors to provide draught power. How are private operators expected to repair their own tractors when government is failing with endless access to funds through the Government Purchase Order (GPO)?
Covid has come to redefine every aspect of life including the agricultural sector. The positive thing is that this changed the attitudes of many Batswana into recognizing that agriculture is the way to go. Government must continue with subsidies but there must be proper monitoring and evaluation. A lot of farmer make use of the subsidy and never turn back to clear weeds and protect the crops from animal invasion and pest infestation. Its fire and forget and the yields tell it all.
Government spends as much as P500 million on ISPAAD but the returns are not promising. The biggest enemy of the program is lack of monitoring and evaluation. Rogue farmers who abuse the program must be weeded out and this will only be possible if government increases its part on the monitoring part.
