Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture John Dumelo has officially launched Captain Tractors onto the Ghanaian market and inaugurated a new Agricultural Mechanisation Centre in the Eastern Region, marking a significant step in the government’s campaign to close one of the most stubborn gaps in Ghana’s agricultural productivity: affordable mechanisation for smallholder farmers.
The launch, facilitated through a partnership between Ghanaian enterprise group Hawkrad and India’s Captain Tractors, targets the large segment of Ghanaian farmers who have historically been unable to afford full-scale industrial tractors but whose farm operations far exceed what manual labour alone can support. Captain Tractors is an established Indian manufacturer recognised for compact, fuel-efficient, and easy-to-operate tractor models engineered for diverse farming conditions, making their machines particularly well suited to the variable terrain and scale of smallholder farms common across Ghana’s agricultural zones.
Addressing farmers, traditional leaders, and private sector partners at the ceremony, Dumelo framed the event as a decisive shift in how government approaches farm equipment access. “For too long, our smallholder farmers have been caught in the middle ground, needing more power than a hoe but finding massive industrial tractors impracticable or unaffordable,” he said. “These tractors represent precision and accessibility.”
The Deputy Minister described the new mechanisation centre as the most strategically critical component of the initiative, warning that equipment without maintenance infrastructure quickly becomes a liability. “A tractor without a service centre is merely a ticking clock. This centre will serve as a sanctuary for maintenance, a hub for spare parts, and, most importantly, a classroom. We are not just giving farmers keys. We are building an ecosystem of operators, technicians and entrepreneurs,” he said.
The launch aligns with the government’s Feed Ghana Programme, under which 50 farm service centres are being established nationwide to provide farmers with on-demand access to tractors, combine harvesters, irrigation systems, improved seeds, and agricultural guidance. The Deputy Minister has consistently stressed that efficiency drives productivity and profitability, and that mechanisation interventions must be paired with technical capacity to be sustainable.
President Mahama, speaking at the National Agribusiness Dialogue in 2025, made the philosophy explicit: “What farmers really need is not to own tractors and combine harvesters, but access to the services.” The Eastern Region facility directly embodies this access-over-ownership model.
Eastern Regional Director of Agriculture Samuel Barima Offiso described the partnership between Hawkrad and Captain Tractors as one that would extend mechanisation services beyond the immediate enclave to the entire Eastern Region and eventually to Ghana at large.
