ISSN 2360-7971
Abstract: Successful farming depends upon a range of inputs amongst which energy has a vital influence on both agricultural efficiency and productivity. Agricultural production in the middle belt of Nigeria has suffered many setbacks due to a lack of adequate farm power sources for mechanization especially in the area of land preparation. This paper presents an estimation of farm power sources potentially available and identified the three main sources of farm power in the North-central zone of Nigeria that are used for land preparation. There is a comparison between the levels of contribution of each power source to the agricultural production in the North-central zone of Nigeria. It is shown that human power accounts for more than half the available farm power in the study region. Human power has the highest contribution taking 63% of the total farm power sources spread all over the north central zone of Nigeria. It is supplemented by tractors and draught animal power sources at 24% and 13% levels respectively. It is concluded among other things that the low level of tractor uses all over the north central zone of Nigeria calls for concern, as there is still much to be done to relieve the farmers of laborious manual tasks.
Keywords: Evaluation, available farm power sources, land preparation, north central zone, Nigeria