How we construct threshers for farmers, local fabricators

45 years old Haruna Musa Panteka owns El-Harun Construction and Metal Work in Panteka area of Kaduna metropolis. Haruna and his colleagues fabricate various agricultural paraphernalia for various agric produce. In this interview, he told Daily Trust on Sunday that they have ideas, skills to complement government’s efforts in achieving food sufficiency in the country. […]

45 years old Haruna Musa Panteka owns El-Harun Construction and Metal Work in Panteka area of Kaduna metropolis. Haruna and his colleagues fabricate various agricultural paraphernalia for various agric produce. In this interview, he told Daily Trust on Sunday that they have ideas, skills to complement government’s efforts in achieving food sufficiency in the country.

 

You fabricate agric equipment of various types, which one do you really enjoy to produce more and for what purpose?

There is this multipurpose thresher designed to filter dust, straw, husk, sand of various farm produce like maize, beans, guinea corn, soya beans, millet, which facilitates as well as speeds up cleaning process.

 

How did you guys start all these?

We have our own God-given talent to develop our country and we observed what people need at a particular time and this made us to develop interest in agricultural tools. We realise there were no threshers for processing beans and sorghum in the market and we decided to construct the device to boost its production. We also fabricated similar machine for rice processing. In a day, this machine can thresh between 150 to 200 bags of the above mentioned produce.

 

How long does it take you to construct the thresher?

This machine came into reality after several efforts of trials, testing and failure for over 20 months before got it right.

 

What is the cost of the machine?

We produce a thresher at the cost of N650, 000 only.

 

And what other equipment?

There is this sieving device designed to sieve several farm produce like sesame seeds, which due to lack of harvesting equipment, usually come with sand. This machine removes all dust, husk and sand perfectly well without necessarily going through the local method and it removes sand 100 percent.

 

But were the machines only made locally or mix with foreign devices?

They were made locally without any foreign tools but the only foreign part is the electric power machine use to turn round the parts. Apart from that, the wheel and other components are been constructed in the turner machine here locally.

 

It seems you duplicate them from the existing foreign equipment or you created your own initiative?

No, it is from the request from farmers who demanded for it and since there were no such equipment in the market, we demonstrated our talent in the construction of the device and thereafter, whenever farmers demanded for an equipment, we try our own initiative.

 

Are you the only one in this venture?

I am not alone, we have seven different teams that are fabricating agricultural tools here in Panteka market in Kaduna.

 

What are the challenges you guys are facing, especially in the area of production and marketing?

Our major challenge is how Nigerians will support our initiative by patronizing our products instead of going for foreign ones.

Secondly we need financial support from government because the biggest hurdles we are facing is lack of capital to produce the machines. If we can get support from government, we have the potentials to provide world class agricultural equipment to boost commercial agriculture in the country. You know for you to fabricate an invention like this, it will cost a lot of money because for you sell the equipment in market you need enough capital to produce scores of it.

 

Have you approach any of the government initiative programmes to support your venture?

Yes, we have applied for government loan, hoping to get but not yet successful.