Survey of agricultural mechanization services in northern Ghana

Sub-Saharan Africa has the world’s lowest level of agricultural mechanization as 65% of farm power is provided by humans. Therefore, the Sustainable Farming Program of the CGIAR has included an area of work (AoW) scale-appropriate mechanization (SAM) to address inhance efficiency, save labor, reduce drugery, and reduce costs of agricultural activities among samllholder farmers. The SAM AoW has an ambition of reaching out to about a million of smallholder farmers in developing countries by 2030, increasing their access to machinery services and improving labor productivity by at least 25%. It aims to achieve this by following human-centered design approaches based upon knowledge of various SAM options identified for target beneficiaries, promotion of SAMs that most improve labor productivity and reduce carbon footprint developed, and the development and distribution of tools that facilitate the design, testing and scaling of vetted equipment through mechanization stakeholder platforms. This study was conducted to establish a baseline on the supply side of mechanization services in northern Ghana.