It is early morning and all roads are leading to Jinja with farmers and various agricultural stakeholders going to participate in the ongoing agricultural show and the Source of the Nile agricultural show ground.

On arrival the reporter’s first focus is on the agricultural industrialization and scientist’s interest in fabricating machinery to support small scale farmers in the rural areas in processing their various crops ranging from legumes, root tubers and cereals among others.

A walk to Naro’s Agricultural Engineering and Appropriate Technology Research Center (AEATREC) section, one is welcomed by a seeing a number of agro processing machinery for various crops portable for small scale farmers.

Background

AEATREC is one of the research centres of the National Agricultural Research Organisation (Naro) administered under the National Agricultural Research Laboratories (NaRL) in Kawanda.  The engineering institute is located at Namalere.

It is mandated to generate and disseminate agricultural engineering technologies and innovations that enable farmers, cottage processors and value chain actors meet the production, processing and agro industrial market demand.

The centre also provides testing, evaluation, standardization and certification services of agricultural machines and equipment developed or imported by other players in the value chain.

The agro processing machinery demonstrated to farmers at Jinja agricultural show

Agricultural Engineer Ronald Walozi who is a research officer at AEATREC giving details of the recently produced agro processing machinery by a team of scientists at the Institute notes that there are a number of a machinery on display for farmers who are seeking such services.

These include among others Naro Light Weight Rice thresher, ASI Rice Thresher, Naro- Soy Thresher, Naro hand Cranked Maize Sheller, Naro Cas-Chip for chipping root tuber crops such as cassava among others.

This innovations he notes came as a result of challenges farmers face with harvesting and drying a number of farm produce using ordinary method of cracking the produce and drying it under sunshine.

The ordinary way of processing these products is labour intensive, uniformity of the end product cannot be attained as well attaining good quality is a challenge.

“Usually before we develop a certain farm machinery in our workshop at Namalere, we do it according to farmer’s needs. This require us to go ground to interact with farmers in the various regions across the country to establish farmers needs and demand to enable us to develop the right machinery,” notes Engineer Walozi.

He explained how the various machinery operates depending on the specification required in processing the different crop produce with details as below.

NARO CAS-CHIP

This is a food grade fresh cassava chipping machine designed to produce high quality cassava chips for human consumption and industrial use. The initiative started in 2015 and it is ongoing because a number of farmers usually place their order and in one week the machine is developed.

 It is good for enterprenual youth and women group who mainly engaged in cassava flour processing in the rural farming communities as income earning initiative

It is capable of producing uniform chips which can be easily dried when spread under sunshine. It takes about 1-2 days for chips to dry ready for grinding to process pure cassava flour as opposed to ordinary cassava processing that may build mould leading to poor quality flour.

It has capacity of processing 450-600kg of chips per hour using one litre petrol and farmers are able to add value from pure cassava flour including for baking confectionary products such as biscuits, cakes, bread and cookies among others.

It components include a petrol engine, inlet to receive peeled and fleshly washed cassava tubers, the hipping unit which picks small chips the tuber. Others are the frame belt which allows and transmits power from the engine

Farmers are encouraged to use it on farm and already farmers from the Eastern and Northern Uganda have acquired them as groups and individually making the processing work easy. It is cost effective because one machine is sold at Shs4.5million.

Farmers are required to make 50%payments before the experts embark on developing the machine and thereafter it is deployed to the area of destination.

NARO-SOY Thresher

This is a motorised thresher for threshing soybean developed to avoid challenges faced when threshing manually leading to scattering of seed in untidy places.

It is a recent machine with the first developed in 2020 after farmers growing soybean in Northern Uganda mainly in Acholi and Lango sub region demanding it.

The machine has capacity of threshing whole dried soybean plant between 100 and 120kg per hour with 1 litre diesel.

It is expected to be operated by 3 people, one person feeding the plant into the inlet another operating the engine and the third person collecting the dust and husks blown in an opposite direction.

What is required is a clean Tarpaulin Paper on which the machine is placed on farm as threshing processing is done in order to obtain clean seeds.

The components include Engine belt, threshing unit, input jute, dust/ husk jute, fan for blowing off the husks and the frame. It costs Shs6 million per machine and the payments terms are the same with the cassava chip.

NARO Light Weight Rice Thresher

It is a motorised rice thresher specifically designed for women and youth groups involved in rice production.

The output is 650-750kg per hour using 1 liter petrol and it reduces physical grain loss during threshing from 4.5% - 0.1%

It weighs only 138-150kg compared to the heavy weights of 1000kg making it easily to be hand pushed within the rice field. When using it, the economic gain is 138 US dollars per hectare.

The components include the engine threshing unit, tyres used for rolling it on farm since it is mobile

Most farmers using it are those in Doho Irrigation scheme in Butaleja district and those growing upland rice in Acholi and Lango sub region including West Nile.

It was deployed to farmers in 2016 and each costs Shs5 million.

ASI Rice Thresher

This is a machine specifically designed for rice farms of at least 20 hectares or farmers growing rice in groups on large scale.

The threshing output is 1,500-2,000 kg per hour and since it is slightly heavy, most farmers prefer to use oxen, power tiller or tractor to pull it on farm.

NARO Hand Cranked maize Sheller

It is a simple hand cranked maize Sheller designed for youth groups, those with vision impairment, those who are lame and the elderly because it has a seat for someone to sit on as the push the maize into the shelling unit one by one. Its output is 60-80kgof cleaned maize grain per hour.

NARO-1-Wedder

This is an animal drawn inter-row weeder designed to weed mainly cereal and legume crops using a pair of oxen.

It can be easily used by women and youth since it is light and it is capable of weeding 0.25 hectares per hour. It weeds crops with spacing 30-90 cm in between.

These include crops such as upland rice, maize, beans and soybean among others. It removes 91-93% of weeds in the garden in a single weeding operation

NARO FOR A-CHOP

This is a motorized forage chopper adopted to chop fodder for livestock feeding. The chopped fodder can either be fed fresh or preserved as silage for future feeding of animals.

The machine has two models which include Naro Fora- Chop-1 which chops partially shreds forage into smaller pieces and the second model is Naro Fora-Chop-G which performs both duties of chopping and grinding grain for livestock.

It is mainly placed on wheels for improving easiness of movement on farm

Its output is 500-600kg of fresh chopped forage for light duty and 1,500-1,600kg of fresh chopped forage for heavy duty per hour. The chopped fodder length varies from 25-50mm.