Dear Wazuans has any of the house members had experience with the hand guided motorised ploughs. How are their performance and what counsel would one give. I am thinking of acquiring one but needs to know more about them.Thanks

Would be interested to know more too...

@Ganu Danu
Have you researched on places to buy?how much are they going for? (As we await the experiemces of other usesrs..)

Check Marina Machineries, 2 floor KFA along Haile selassie near Wakulima mkt parking Bay there is a Chinese there they go for about 200,000.00

What sizes/HP/weight etc. are you talking about?

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Or are talking about the one's on their website http://www.marinakenya.com/harvester_walking.html ?

Hi all

I visited some companies in industrial area late last year. I had similar interest. They are available there with all accessories (Plough dics, harrow and trailer if you want). Price range then was approx 180-200K but could be different now. I will pop in same outlets and drop in contacts when I go next - though I am usually busy out in the field on weekends.

I have seen them in use. Very handy especially if you train someone on usage. Very suitable for small scale, much better than oxen & can easily subsidize by doing commercializing to gain fuel & labour costs. It ploughs up to 2 acres per day and runs on diesel engine. Mainly Chinese and India made but few could be Korean origin.

I would guess the US origin units are likely to be more robust and better. I am interested to know what it will cost to import the 2nd hand ones and can easily market them in farming zones.

@MtCarmel

anyone has the useful life on this baby, maintenance cost, diesel consumption per acre and the cost of operating??? This is for cost benefit analysis and also compare it with manual work.....coz m thinking 200Gz on small scale..it best be worth it....

Hi Nicky and Jasonhill

Thanks for both your responses.
Like the few I have seen used here, from 15-18HP (11-13KW diesel engines max 20HP will do. Talking from experience, I see potential especially if tested and marketed well. Most rural small scale farmers have 1/2 -5 acre farm holdings and during land preparation/planting season the demand for heavy duty tractors is high and scarce with higher costs.
At the moment, all Agricultural equipment is zero rated duty in Kenya

Operating costs: I will have to work this out later but I belief this is definitely cheaper than large engine capacity (normal) tractor. In farming zones the critical things are availability of support (parts and maintenance-skill). This cannot be compared with manual tilling. Casual labour costs have gone very high with high costs on managing labour and poor quality of work. Most farmers dont prefer to use manual labour anymore fro normal tilling. In some areas Oxen driven tillers are used but these cannot compare with engine operated.

Please contact me on tmongare@gmail.com we discuss more

These thing are very popular with peasant farmers in China... I guess you can't feed 1.5b mouths with jembes and pangas!

Anyone who's used this in Kenya? How was it?

But can you use them as planters? I gues then there will be no strain/vibrations.