Somewhere the question was put " Is there still a role for older technologies and for traditional approaches? Or embracing industrial production systems should be the way forward?" Having worked in South and SE Asia in ag mechanization R and D for 20+ years I hear and read this either-or question discussed by many African colleuages and aqaintences. And my answer has always been that if you take a South South view of what is going on in the developing world, particularly south and South and SE Asia but also in some countries in S America and even now Africa you will find that there are many diverse and "mixed large and small scale" or middle paths to near levels of 100% agricultural mechanization. The term coined 7-8 years ago in development speak as "scale appropriate" mechanization. Meaning that in a scenario like Bangladesh you will currently find 700,000 2-wheel (AKA power tillers available in 12- to 22 HP ) and 80,000 4-wheel tractors (available from 25 - 75 hp). And where now 95% of all Bangladesh's farmers don't own a machiney but can easily "rent in" tillage, threshing and transport services via these and other machinery.
Another characteristic in many of these Asian countries the machinery are fairly priced where 2WTs (Chinse made) cost roughly 120 USD per HP (1500 - 2600 USD) and 4WTs (Indian made) costing prettying much around 200 -260 USD for every HP ( HP tractor). It took time but even in place like Nepal where the competitaive prices has greatly increased the availabity for purchase and for renting in of such machines. Even the family farms in Nepal's Himalaya mountains are currently mechanizing with even smaller small appropriate equipments like the light weight, low cost (350-500 USD) 6 HP mini tillers (total sales in last 5 years has reached over 25,000 ) that can be carried and if the operator is good even driven up and down the side of the mountains and providing tillage services to the point that in many mountian districts plow oxen have nearly dissappeared.
So this view of its either traditional hand hoe/animal drawn OR industrial production systems is just faulty. To be sure there are industrial production systems in all these S and SE Asia countries. But its the ever mechanizing small family farm (now commonly renting in reaper or even combine harvesrer services), that continues to gain in productivity while reducing time costs that has development policy leaders, development planners and academics ( see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289928057_The_puzzle_of_East_a… ) scratching their heads about persistence of small family farms in Asia. Where small family farms of smaller SE Asia rice growing countries farmers are out producing out exporting even the US rice farmers nearly every year for the last 20 years. And a development basic case of the 1970s and 80s Bangladesh goes from about 10 MTs per year to over 30MTs of rice per year. ANd they do so with small single cylinder diesel engine irrigation pumpsets, 2WTs that plow nearly all the SE and South Asia's river delta rice growing areas.
There are many naysayers that South South is not useful and I will be first to agree that Asia and AFrica contexts are very different. But already there are pockets of scale appropriate emergying in places like Ethiopia, Tanzania etc.
Maputo 2003, AGRA 2006 , and theirs and other high level pronouncements (AU, BMG, etc) to "retire the hoe to the museums" while outwardly support the mechanizing of African Agriculture have in fact done very little. This in turns has actually left most African countries with same or even smaller levels of mechanization than they had 20 years ago. THe shutting down of the academic debates on ag mechanization in development more than 30 years ago (https://csisa.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/BiggsJusticeIFPRI_…; - Please excuse me for a moment of blatant self promotion ) by lead donors and the academy left S and SE Asia's mechanization mostly in the hands of the private sector. In places like Bangladesh, THailand and even Nepal the emerging local private sector seeminly had the needs of their countries' farmers in mind, and led to a late but interesting and I argue socially equitable mechanization processes that have mostly benefited farmily farms there.
We should all worry that this time around that even with plenty of evidence that the mechanization debates restarted sometime ago for Africa but have produce little public sector led programming. This is at least partially due to donor focus on two other inputs seed and fertiizer that now after decades of programming have not contributed as expected to Africa's agriculture. This bias in effect continues to leave Africa not to any emergying national private sectors - there are none- but to the west, east and south based multinational tractor OEMs. And even when bilateral donors whose develpment organizations were free to promote technologies they felt best suited local conditions are now policitically tied to back and promote their nation's tractor manufacturers. The question here hardly needs to be asked. In whose best interests are these development decisions being made?
S Justice