Cultivation and Tools

Alison Bentley of the National Institute of Agricultural Botany and Ari Sadanandom of the University of Durham both in the United Kingdom will examine whether a new molecular link that they found explaining the increase in plant diseases (biotic factors) associated with high nutrient levels (abiotic factors) can be exploited to maximize wheat crop yield with minimal negative impact on the environment. Wheat, one of the first domesticated food crops, has been grown for over 10,000 years and is critically important to global food supply.

Jodie Wu of Global Cycle Solutions in Tanzania will evaluate an affordable hand-powered multi-crop thresher to enable smallholder farmers to thresh a variety of crops in a fast and modular way. The thresher significantly increases productivity, works without electricity, and is portable, thereby reducing costs to the individual farmer. It is easy to manufacture from cheap and available parts, and is thus easy to maintain. A prototype, designed in collaboration with local farmers, has already been successfully tested.

Joseph Parse of Synovision Solutions in the U.S. will develop equipment to convert waste plastic shopping bags into drip irrigation tubing suitable for use by women smallholder farmers in developing countries. In arid regions where water is in short supply, carrying or pumping water for irrigation on smallholder farms is time- consuming and inefficient. These regions tend to also have lots of consumer waste, including plastic shopping bags.

Charles Spillane, Paul Wagtaff, and Una Murray of the National University of Ireland, Galway, in Ireland will lead a team in working to enable women smallholder farmers in Tanzania to design and develop their own labor-saving agricultural tools. They will work with six women farmer groups to identify agricultural and food processing tasks that require the highest labor demands, and assist them with designing improved tools. The top designs will then be scanned with a 3D camera and printed as plastic prototypes using low-cost printers.

Ton Rulkens and his team from Oxfam-Solidarité in Belgium will bring together women smallholder farmers, local blacksmiths, and scientists in a participatory approach to design labor-saving hoes for tilling and weeding in Northern Mozambique. Successful and widespread implementation of labor-saving tools has proven difficult to achieve partly due to a lack of consideration of local conditions. By taking into account women's preferences, accessibility constraints, social systems, and cultural beliefs, they will design improved hoe samples that should be more readily adopted.

Margaret Smith and colleagues at Iowa State University in the U.S. will evaluate a simple, portable, hand-operated seed cleaner using 320 women farmers in Uganda. Current practices are physically demanding, time consuming, and reduce the quality of the grain. They will refine the design of the seed cleaner using input from the target farmers to produce a second-generation device for local manufacturing. It will then be tested with several legume crops for durability, ease of transport, and affordability for groups of smallholder women farmers.

August Basson of the KEL Growing Nations Trust in Lesotho and collaborator Adriaan Jacobs will develop a time-saving seed planter adapted for use by small-scale women farmers planting maize and other grain crops. No-till planters reduce soil disturbance in order to promote conservation agriculture and improve productivity, but current models were designed for commercial use and down-scaled, making them inefficient and impractical for use by women. They will engineer an adapted rotary punch planter and distribute them for testing in the field.

Michelle Winthrop of Farm Africa (Food & Agricultural Research Management) in the United Kingdom will lead a team of community development experts to support 300 women farmers in Ethiopia to access and use existing technologies such as weeders and seed drills that substantially reduce the labor intensity of growing maize and sorghum. There are many cultural and social barriers that have prevented widespread adoption of new technologies in these settings, particularly for women.

Karime Séré of Intermon Oxfam of Spain, in collaboration with the National Research Institute for Technology and Science in Burkina Faso, will develop more efficient and durable rice husk furnaces and lower-cost rice sorting equipment to reduce the labor intensity of parboiled rice production, the principal livelihood activity of 18,000 Burkinabe women. Rice husk furnaces significantly reduce the time burden of collecting firewood by utilizing rice hulls as a readily available substitute fuel, and also reduce cooking time of rice by around half.

Setegn Gebeyehu of Oxfam America in the U.S. will work with Ethiopian women farmers, the private sector, and the Ethiopian Agricultural Extension System to develop and provide wooden groundnut shellers with substantial labor-saving and economic benefits. By involving all relevant parties in the design and testing process, they aim to develop low-cost, durable shellers that can be locally produced and maintained. This should promote widespread adoption, which has been a barrier to success for other labor-saving devices.