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10.000 John Deere's for tractor-Uber
The Uber taxi app is extremely popular worldwide and at the same time controversial. A similar system is now also used in agriculture. In fact, John Deere sees so much future in it that they are making 10.000 tractors available.
The chance that you will find an Uber tractor in the Netherlands is not great; nowhere in Europe anyway. The Uber of the agricultural sector is called 'Hello Tractor' and lives in Nigeria. The service is also offered in the other sub-Saharan countries. Major parties are joining the startup. Technology giant IBM supplied the software and John Deere provides the tractors.
10.000 tractors
Currently Hello Tractor supports a fleet of 1.000 tractors, but within a few years that should grow to 10.000 (in Nigeria only). John Deere takes 5 years for this, but the creator of the platform is the American businessman Jehiel Oliver. To make the African agricultural sector self-sufficient, he decided to build simple tractors himself. That idea failed miserably, then in 2014 he came up with Hello Tractor.
How does the system work? Hello Tractor sells the tractors to contractors; sometimes a dealer is there first. The contractor then rents out the tractors to the farmers, after which they use them. In between is a Hello Tractor agent, who has to make sure everything runs smoothly. Via an app you can follow the tractor and as a customer see where 1 is driving in the area to rent.
Financiering
The Nigerian farmers have on average less than 1 hectare of land under the plow, which makes it impossible to invest in a new tractor. At the same time, finding work is a growing problem, because the (young) population in the countryside is moving to the cities. Mechanization is the only solution, but because of the small size of the companies, a Nigerian farmer does not receive financing. John Deere will receive it, which means that the plan has a good chance of success.
In the past, mechanization in Africa was developed via 1 model. The government bought the tractors, which were then distributed to the farmers for free. It went on like that for 20 years without any success. Tractors are misused and not maintained. By not selling the tractors to farmers, but to contractors, Hello Tractor hopes that they will be well maintained and last longer. The entire chain takes care of that.
Self-sufficient
Nigeria has the ambition to bring 9 million hectares of fallow land into production. Agriculture must eventually produce 37 million tons of extra food to be self-sufficient. Hello Tractor is also active in Kenya, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania and Bangladesh. Here too John Deere supports the program, although initiators are also looking for other manufacturers to work with. There are plans to launch the app in Asia.
Niels van der Boom
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