The low international prices for petroleum products have continued to impact a depressive effect on the Nigeria economy. More than ever before, the need to for the diversification of the economy is being advocated.  There is an apparent cash squeeze and cut in spending by government at all levels with salaries now coming late. The two major areas attracting attention for the economic diversification are agriculture and minerals. The best chance in agriculture is the adoption of the value chain development approach with intensification of value addition along the various food commodity value chains. Job and wealth creation will obviously be faster by supporting the expansion of small and medium scale food processing business enterprises.

Presently small scale food businesses are generally not producing efficiently, thus volumes of output and quality are adversely affected. One of their most pressing difficulties is that the operations are mostly carried out by manual labour. Time has come for the promotion of small scale food processing business mechanization as a means of promoting food businesses for diversification of the economy. Nigeria with a population of about 180 million requires millions of tons of food to be processed, preserved, stored, packaged, distributed etc. It is not possible that most of these operations will be carried out efficiently by manual operations. Mechanization will reduce the cost of operations especially by increasing the volume of products per unit time. It will reduce the drudgery associated with manual operations and also improve quality consistency and product safety. More youths will be attracted to food processing business if the operations are mechanized.

Some of the equipment that could be readily promoted to support the post-harvest operations along our food commodity value chains includes machines for: threshing, shelling, nut cracking, pressing, extrusion, destonning, winnowing, drying, polishing, colour-sorting, parboiling/blanching, grading, packaging, dehulling, screening/sieving, frying, toasting etc. Government and development partners could assist by training more fabricators, and improving the engineering skills of already existing ones to produce high quality and safer machines using the best materials. The increase of equipment manufacturing business is also a way of expanding the food value chains and growing the economy. They could also subsidize equipment costs to make them affordable over a period of time. As Food Scientists and Technologists we must encourage colleagues, clients and small scale operators to mechanize their operations and contribute to the diversification of the economy.