Rural mechanization for equitable development: Disarray, disjuncture, and disruption

Abstract

Motivation: Agricultural mechanization was once a mainstream issue.From the 1990s onwards it received less priority, as public policy concern for equitable economic development in rural areas faded. Despite recent signs of renewed interest, questions of rural mechanization require more systematic attention. After a long period of neglect, our knowledge is in disarray. Purpose: This article traces the evolution of thinking about rural mechanization. It examines how three increasingly important factors affect or potentially affect mechanization: (1) expansion of capital goods markets; (2) evolving urban-rural linkages; and (3) climate crisis. Methods and approach:The article reviews the literature that documents long-standing debates, and that which records changes in the rural areas of the global south in the 2010s. Findings: Public policy for rural mechanization was often seen in the 1960s as central to rural development. When neoliberal economics rose in the 1980s, it was thought issues of mechanization could be left to the suppliers and customers in the market. In the meantime, and especially in Asia, many rural operations have been mechanized, but these changes have attracted relatively little attention from either researchers or policy-makers. In the 2010s, the pattern of mechanization has been influenced by changes in the production of machinery and the way that suppliers try to sway policy-makers towards favouring their products; by changes in the relations between urban and rural areas, including the emergence of rural labour shortage and the availability of remittances for capital investment; and by the challenges posed to farmers by global heating and the climate crisis. Each of these trends is potentially disruptive, risking disjuncture between our understandings of the changing realities of "real world" rural livelihoods and wider political economy on the one hand, and the need to ensure the relevance of research agendas to policy priorities on the other. Policy implications: Policy-makers need to embrace a more holistic view of mechanization based on evidence from multi-disciplinary research. Policy needs rebalancing to enable a more integrated view of national economies; a greater recognition of the realities of This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Determinants of Profitability Among Agricultural Equipment Fabricators in Oyo State, Nigeria

“…Technological advancement has been a primary driving force in enhancing agricultural productivity and supporting agricultural growth (Liu et al, 2020). From on-farm operations to off-farm activities, agricultural mechanization has been identified as a crucial factor in increasing agricultural productivity and promoting rural sector industrialization, as well as the overall economic development of nations (Lewis et al, 2022). Agricultural mechanization is also considered to heavily impact the supply and demand of labour and agricultural profitability, hence serving as a backbone for every thriving agricultural economy (Peng et al, 2022).…”

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“…Studying the evolution of agricultural mechanisation, D. Lewis et al (2022) identified the most influential factors: the expansion of input markets; the development of urban-rural linkages; and the climate crisis. The authors drew attention to the need to formulate policies for the development of mechanisation of small farms and small and medium-sized enterprises by taking into account local and national characteristics, obtaining proposals from various sources, and creating a database of these enterprises, in particular through public-private partnership experiments.…”