Machinery

: 25 August 2022; Hits: 631

Tea estate to halve spraying costs with drone technology

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By George Munene

Fahari Aviation, a subsidiary of Kenya Airways PLC, will deploy high-capacity drones to cover over 3000 acres of tea plantation in less than two weeks for Kipkebe Ltd, a subsidiary of Sasini PLC. This will save an overall 50 per cent on cost and time efficiency in fertilizer and chemical spraying and spreading.

Kipkebe farm will be used to benchmark the effectiveness of drone use with a possibility to expand the service offering to other Sasini estates.

This follows Fahari Aviation signing a service agreement with Sasini PLC to offer precision agricultural services.

Speaking on the signed agreement, Silas Njibwakale, Managing Director at Kipkebe Limited said, "The technology will definitely reduce the time span for fertilizer application on the tea fields ensuring that application coincides with good weather conditions, enhance crop yields while reducing attendant costs, as well as adverse impacts on humans and the environment.

As a leading agricultural enterprise, Kipkebe is uniquely positioned to lead our industry towards the future of sustainable farming.”

Drone technology in agriculture also offers better accountability of product supply as well as improved accessibility of tough terrains.

Hawkins Musili, General Manager at Fahari Aviation said,” Agriculture forms the backbone of our economy, and drones have revolutionized agriculture by offering farmers major cost savings, and enhanced efficiency within the region. We are proud to announce this agreement as Fahari Aviation seeks to reach new heights for more precise applications within the agricultural sector.”

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: 22 August 2022; Hits: 966

KALRO manufactures multi-grain thresher to increase farmer profits

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By George Munene

The Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization Agricultural Mechanization Research Institute (KALRO-AMRI) has manufactured a small grains multi-crop thresher that will help farmers reduce their threshing cost by over 90 per cent while increasing thousandfold the amount of grain produced per hour.

The multi-crop thresher will increase farmer profit margin, and labour productivity while decreasing the cost of production. It will also enhance the quality of produce as the grain from manual threshing is often contaminated with debris ranging from stones to chicken droppings.

This will all enable farmers to realise full value from their harvest, encouraging them to plant grain crops.

Threshing or shelling refers to the separation of grain--the edible part of the crop, from the portion of the plant that holds them. For most farmers, it is one of the most deterring activities in the production value chain of grains as it is labour intensive and drudgerous.

“The thresher reduces manual labour costs from Sh80 per kilogram to just Sh5. The time taken per kilogram when processing grain manually is 1.875kg/hr. 70kg/hr can be produced when operations are mechanised,” explained Nasirembe Wanjala, an agricultural engineer in charge of agricultural mechanisation at the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation (KALRO), Katimani.

The machine will be able to thresh beans, rice, wheat, green grams, sorghum, finger millet, pigeon peas, amaranth, and Teff.

The crop is dried to 13-16 percent moisture content before being threshed.

There are three stages of cleaning grain; primary sieving, secondary sieving, and winnowing.

The machine performs threshing, sieving, and winnowing in one operation.

Women manually threshing harvested bean pods

Women manually threshing harvested bean pods

How to Operate

After preparing the crop, it is fed through a hopper uniformly.

High engine speeds crack grains while low speeds have poor winnowing ability

The thresher operator should always use protective gear and set the machine across wind direction.

The output of the thresher will vary according to the type of crop, crop conditions such as yield, maturity, moisture content, and machine factors such as feeding rate, sieve matching, engine speed, and winnower setting.

Under optimum conditions the outputs are;

Crop type Speed, rpm Output kg/hr

Finger millet 2600 70

Sorghum 2800 120

Green grams 2800 180

Pigeon pea 2800 180

Teff 2700 200

Beans 2200 80

“This initiative we hope will strengthen entrepreneurship among our farmers. It will also enhance our manufacturing and agro-processing industries, and help spur industrialization through our cottage industry,” Nasirembe concluded.

KALRO AMRI: P.O. BOX 340-90100, Machakos

Tel: 020 20 76915

Mobile: 0727031783

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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: 27 July 2022; Hits: 1082

Nonprofit introduces cheaper Pay-As-You-Go model of tractor ownership

Tractors For Africa T4A

By George Munene

Global nonprofit Heifer International has partnered with Hello Tractor to introduce a Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) rent-to-own tractor financing program.

Dubbed Tractors 4 Africa (T4A), it will enable Kenyan and Nigerian agri-entrepreneurs to become tractor owners at a reduced cost and without requiring any security given they have a farmer network.

The financing model will require a tractor owner to only pay five per cent upfront of the total tractor cost--from between Sh3.5 million to 5 million. This is repaid through a flexible tenure of between three to five years.

Interest rates will range from 10-14%, depending on the borrower's creditworthiness.

Before qualifying, the loanee will need to have pre-booked 1,235 acres for ploughing in the Hello Tractor app. Depending on the value of the tractor and the number of implements, up to Sh 850 will be deducted for every acre of land serviced to pay down the loan.

“This is a simple, affordable, and flexible tractor finance program. Unlike traditional banks, we are also in tune with the nuanced dynamics within African agriculture. This helps us better serve farmers,” said Belinder Jabuya, Hello Tractor’s PAYG Account Manager.

Agricultural mechanisation in Africa helps to overcome labour bottlenecks, enabling farmers to cultivate up to 61 per cent more land on time and report over 71 per cent more yield. Despite this, around 80-90 per cent of farmers on the continent still rely on manual labour or draught animals.

Beyond providing affordable tractor financing, the Tractors 4 Africa project is purposefully geared to bring more of the continent's land under mechanised agriculture.

Hello Tractor: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
+254 (0) 706 033 976

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