Agricultural Mechanization Status for Some Crops in Irrigated Sector in River Nile State, Sudan

Abstract

Agricultural mechanization and it is impact on agricultural productivity was studied by many authors in different areas in the world. Irrigated agriculture in the Sudan, have played a significant role in expanding agricultural mechanization, and the major mechanized operation is the land preparation, operations such as planting, spraying, fertilizer application, mechanical weeding and harvesting are still largely carried out manually. A baseline survey on mechanization status was implemented in River Nile State, focuses on mechanization status for production of wheat as strategic crop, legumes as food crops, onion and alfalfa as cash crops in smallholder farms. The analysis of respondents answers show that tillage operation has the high percent (90.5-93.3%) of mechanical power among other operations for production of the selected crops, where wheat has considerable percent of using mechanical power in sowing and harvesting operations compare to the three rest crops. For legumes and alfalfa broadcasting of seeds for sowing and cutting and binding at harvest operations, still manual activity prevailing, where for onion transplanting are 100% carried out manually.The mechanization level range between 0.2-0.58, which reflect the less number of tractors to the cultivated areas in the state. Concerning the mechanization index as the ratio of mechanical power to the total power input in term of MJ/ha for each crop range from 0.03- 0.07, shows that manual and animal power still exerted to produce such crops.