Appraisal of farm tractor maintenance practices and costs in Nigeria

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to investigate tractor maintenance practices and costs in Nigeria with a view to making replacement decisions and for overall farm budgeting. Design/methodology/approach -The information was obtained via a structured questionnaire. Tractor owners were grouped into three categories: government agricultural settlements, established farms, and individual farms. Data used for analysis were collected from 60 farms located in major farming centers of the southwestern part of Nigeria. The report includes the formulation of repair equations, which relate tractor repair cost as a percentage of initial purchase prices to cumulative hours of use. Life cycle costs of three commonly-used tractors were also estimated. The derived equations, which showed that the repair costs per hour increased with hours of use, were used to obtain the life cycle cost of each tractor model in different tractor owners' farms. Findings -The proposed equation was found to be the best fit with coefficient of determination (R 2 ) ranging from 0.992 to 0.996 for tractors in the three user categories. The trend observed in the life cycle costing of the three common tractors gave the general picture of when to replace each of the tractors based on the strategies being adopted by the tractor owners. Practical implications -The results of this study would serve as baseline information to tractor owners regarding optimum use of tractors for minimizing repair and maintenance cost per hour and for making replacement policy. It would also be helpful to government and other agencies for future planning in the provision of tractor services to the farmers at relatively lower repair and maintenance cost. Originality/value -Proves that a reduction in repair costs by careful operation and adequate maintenance could result in a significant reduction in tractor ownership costs.

Management accounting research on farms: what is known and what needs knowing?

“…Of the 41 articles included in our sample (Table 2) Only three of the 41 (7.3%) articles in our sample are based on an explicit theory (see Table 2): they are based on Giddens's theory of structuration and new institutionalism in sociology (Jack, 2005), life-cycle costing theories (Jekayinfa et al, 2005) or agency theory approaches (Mugera and Nyambane, 2015). The remaining 38 articles (92.7%) are not based on any explicit theory; they rely more generally on the existing literature (e.g., Carey and Tanewski, 2013;Fatah and Mat-Zin, 2013;Halabi et al, 2010;Halabi and Carroll, 2015;Lu et al, 2016;Ma et al, 2014).…”

“…In the remaining articles, MA in FEs is associated with concepts and practices such as comparative analysis (e.g., Mauldon et al, 1969;Toft, 1964), variance analysis or linear programming (Gebremeskel and Shumway, 1979) and life-cycle analysis or costs (Jekayinfa et al, 2005).…”

“…In the sample, fourteen (approximately 34%) articles are based on farms located in the United States (e.g., Hadrich and Olson, 2011;Gebremeskel and Shumway, 1979), and nine articles (approximately 22%) are based on Australian farms (e.g., Lu et al, 2016;Toft, 1964). Twelve (approximately 29%) articles focus on Indian farms (3 articles: e.g., Chinnappa and Nagaraj, 2007;Dobbs and Foster, 1970), Nigerian farms (3 articles: e.g., Jekayinfa et al, 2005;Olagunju, 2002), Spanish farms (3 articles: e.g., Argilés, 2001;Argilés and Slof, 2003) and British farms (3 articles: e.g., Jack, 2005;Freear, 1970). The remaining farms are split among seven different countries: Egypt (Abdel-Maksoud and Abdel-Maksoud, 2015), China (Ma et al, 2014), Kenya (David, 1997), Libya (Fatah and Mat-Zin, 2013), New Zealand (Rouse et al, 2010) and the Netherlands (Zhengfei and Lansink, 2006).…”

“…Chinnappa and Nagaraj, 2007; Dobbs and Foster, 1972), Nigerian farms (3 articles: e.g. Jekayinfa et al , 2005; Olagunju, 2002), Spanish farms (3 articles: e.g. Argilés, 2001; Argilés and Slof, 2003) and British farms (3 articles: e.g.…”

Length of Operational Life and Its Impact on Life-Cycle Costs of a Tractor in Switzerland

“…According to Lichtenvort et al [4], the General Accounting Office in the US applied LCCs for tractors as early as 1933. Jekayinfa et al [8] analyse the replacement policy for three tractor types in Nigeria by means of LCC. Assuming an identical annual utilisation, the authors report both the accumulated total costs and the average total costs per year over a 12-year period.…”