Some techniques in agricultural extension are like âwaiter music,â explains Eric Boa. This is when waiters put on their favorite music, regardless of whether the diners like it or not. Extensionists do something similar when they promote techniques that are impractical or farmers donât need them.
For me, the classic example of waiter music is bokashi, an organic fertilizer invented in Japan in the late 1800s. Bokashi is made of many ingredients, including rice husks and animal manure.
In Latin America, extensionists have been promoting bokashi since the early 1990s, if not before. The extensionists eagerly gather the ingredients, including some like molasses that have to be store-bought, and mix them together into 100 kilos or so of dough. Farmers are told that if they stir the bokashi every few days the mixture will be composted within three weeks.
Like any organic fertilizer, bokashi is bulky, and 100 kilos of it is only enough for a very small garden. As far as I know, no farmers in Latin America have ever adopted bokashi on their own, I suspect because it is a lot of work to make, and because some of the ingredients are store-bought. Despite these major drawbacks, extensionists continue to promote bokashi.
So this week, when in Nepal, I was delighted to meet Amrit Narayan Shristha, who told me that he owned a bokashi factory. We met in Hemja, a small town in the hills, where Mr. Shristha was visiting agro-dealers to sell them neat, 5 kg bags of bokashi.
As luck would have it, my travels would later take me to the distant town across the country, where Mr. Shristha has a factory producing bokashi.
Even after 15 years of running his factory, Mr. Shristrha was breathless with excitement about the fertilizer. He gave us a pamphlet which expounded on the virtues of bokashi for soil health and clearly listed its chemical components, including the relatively low amounts of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous compared to inorganic fertilizers. However, like any organic fertilizer, bokashi has all of the types of nutrients a plant needs, including the minor ones like zinc and boron.
With my Nepali colleague, Abhishek Sharma, we were warmly received. I was hoping to see machinery turning out large volumes of bokashi, because, if it could be made in large enough amounts, and cheap enough, it might be a viable option for smallholders.
A large mechanical grinder is used to reduce the rice hulls to dust, and another grinder for the other ingredients. The rice hulls go into a large machine that mixes them with chicken manure, cow dung, wood ash, mustard oil cake, sawdust and âeffective microorganismsâ These may be one of the most important ingredients, because they are beneficial bacteria and yeasts.
Later we talked to an extensionist and a group of farmers, who were using bokashi to improve their soil. They add a bit less than a ton of bokashi to a hectare of rice, along with chemical fertilizer, and they are pleased with the increases in yield that they get from the combination.
We were surprised to see four workers on hands and knees on the factory floor, picking sticks and debris out of risks husks from a rice mill. There is still a lot of manual work even in a mechanized factory. Workers stir the bokashi on the shop floor, every few days, using a hoe. Labor and space limitations keep the factory from making more than 20 or 40 tons a month. However, as Paul and I saw during our study of African Seed Enterprises, if a company can stay in business for several years, this alone is a good sign of success.
The factory receives a government subsidy, but it is producing a product that farmers are using, if not as a bulk fertilizer, then as an amendment to improve their soil with organic matter, micro-nutrients, and beneficial microorganisms.
Farmers may not want to make their own bokashi, or need to. If someone else makes it for them, at an affordable price, farmers will use the stuff. As with many agricultural innovations, the trick is not to get farmers to make all of their own inputs, but to encourage entrepreneurs to make products that they want. Manufacturing a product that farmers will buy and use is like a waiter who plays the music his customers enjoy.
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Farmers belong to one of the most entrepreneurial professions one can imagine. They not only have to deal with the vagaries of climate and pests and diseases, but also fluctuations in market price, changing demands of retailers and preferences of consumers. As if this isnât enough, a new threat is lurking on the horizon: farm machinery makers want to restrict the ability of farmers to mend their own machines, increasing costs and eating into farmersâ narrow profit margins.
Generations of farmers have tinkered with tools and machines to make work on the farm easier. Those days may become history soon. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a United States copyright law, manufacturers such as John Deere want to legally stop farmers across the globe from fixing their own machinery if the design of that machine involves electronic devices protected by copyright. An extract from a recent Farm Hack blog post, âFarmers fight for the right to repair their own tractorsâ, summarises common fears about such property laws:
âWhile high-tech agricultural machinery has made the job of farmers more comfortable and more efficient in many regards, this same equipment has also proven to be a nightmare for farmers accustomed to equipment with simple control panels that donât resemble something found on the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise. A generation of farmers capable of popping open the hood and fixing a broken engine with their eyes closed now have their hands tied. While much of the gruelling work involved with farming has eased, so has a sense of control.â
Complex, digitalised machinery designs and proprietary rights are hampering farmersâ creativity and independence, but a community of fighting farmers has stood up. For instance, Farm Hack is an online community of farmers, designers, developers, and engineers helping the community of farmers to be better inventors. They develop and freely share tools that fit the scale and ethics of sustainable family farms. Another initiative, the crowdsourced magazine Farm Show, showcases thousands of local farming inventions from the past three decades.
Initiatives such as fair trade, farm shops and other examples of short food supply chains show farmer creativity at its best. These innovations offer a better and more reliable income to farmers, instilling a sense of connection with consumers while retaining the independence that farmers cherish. The ability to develop and share innovations in farm machinery is an equally important part of that independence and identity that sustains the passion of one of the oldest and most noble profession in the world.
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Digital disruption on the farm | The Economist
Farmers fight for the right to repair their own tractors.
New high-tech farm equipment is a nightmare for farmers.
Everyone wants to see lots of farmers benefitting from agricultural innovations, managing risks more effectively and creating new pathways out of poverty. Success in pilot projects is always encouraging but it is no guarantee that this will translate into bigger gains for the masses.
I recently witnessed a golden opportunity in Rwanda to spread the word about iron beans, one of several biofortified crops developed under the umbrella of Harvest Plus, a major donor-funded programme on nutrition which works closely with national governments around the world. A quartet of development practitioners working with HarvestPlus recently won the World Food Prize.
Rwanda is famous for its ability to mobilize lots of people. They have a special word: Umuganda, a âcoming together in common purpose to achieve an outcomeâ. To some thereâs a strong element of âcome or elseâ, yet my experience of events in Gakenke district suggested clear enthusiasm and interest in attending.
The first event was a mass planting of âiron beansâ close to the main road, a prominent place that was both easy to reach and easy to see. The Governor of the North Province was there, as was a government minister, appointed to strengthen ties from national to local level. It was clearly a significant occasion and I watched in awe as over 100 people placed seed in prepared furrows, adding a dollop of fertilizer. It was a powerful way to promote a nutrient-rich variety of a key staple crop.
Everyone then moved a short distance to a much larger community meeting. New people arrived, swelling numbers to around 1500. As the audience settled on a gentle slope, a singer moved sinuously with microphone in hand, keeping them amused as the assembled dignitaries took their seats in a tented enclosure facing the crowd. My heart sank a little as I waited for long speeches. Managing a large meeting requires skill and active participation keeps people engaged. If they get bored they can leave, even in Rwanda.
I was unsure about the purpose of the community meeting. Was this an extension of the bean planting Umuganda? I could see a display of bean varieties at the end of the tent, but as the singer departed we turned to other things. A short line of people formed on the flat ground between the tent and the slope. It was a mixed group with a common purpose, but each seeking a different outcome. They had all come to petition the authorities about a problem or wrong-doing.
My friend Jean Claude Izamuhaye explained what was going on. âThis woman is disabled, and so is her husband. She wants help with health insurance.â Another lady had problems paying school fees for three daughters. There was a land dispute that a man wanted resolving. Each case was dealt with courteously. A moderator relayed questions to the Governor, Minister and local officials present. A village leader commented on a case.
The large crowd also responded, and not always favourably. One petitioner was deemed to have a frivolous case and was pelted with clumps of grass by neighbours as she retook her seat. The petitions lasted for over an hour. I waited for someone to say something about the beans and point to the display, but nothing happened. When the meeting ended lots of people crowded around the bags of beans, eager to learn about the different varieties on show.
At this point I was mentally urging someone to stand on a seat and give a short message about the beans, encouraging farmers to talk to knowledgeable staff from extension, dressed in distinctive green T shirts, who had been present throughout the meeting as silent observers. Now was the time, I thought, to form small groups and talk about the iron beans or even some other hot topic â the meeting took place soon after maize lethal necrosis disease was found in Rwanda. The extension workers all knew how serious this was.
The farmers milled around, the extension workers talked amongst themselves, and gradually people drifted off, back to their homes and offices. Someone had thought it was a good idea to have an attractive display of bean seeds, in full view of 1500 people, mostly farmers, but that was it. A golden opportunity to âscale-upâ an innovation was only partially seized.
Piggybacking on a community meeting held to resolve social issues needs to be done sensitively, so as not to disrupt the main reason why people came. But with a little thought and effort â getting the agreement of the meeting organisers to talk briefly about beans to everyone assembled, then tagging on a short Q&A session at the end â so much more could have been achieved.
Read more about the World Food Prize 2016
A good farmer training video inspires farmers to modify practices, for example, replacing an ingredient of a locally-made animal feed. But when changing ingredients, one has to know a lot about them, as we learned recently while teaching a video production workshop in Tamil Nadu, southern India.
Explaining the principles behind a certain technology or why something is done in a particular way helps farmers to better understand the innovation and to try it out with whatever resources they have at hand. The different examples shown in a video help to give farmers more ideas to work with.
In Tamil Nadu, one group of trainees was making a video on home-made animal feed, which only costs half as much as concentrated feed that one can buy in a shop.
By interacting with various farmers, the trainees learned quite a few things. While shops sell specific feed for different animals, farmers make a base mix of grains, pulses and oil-cakes that they use to feed all their animals and fish. This saves the farmers time, while allowing them to still tailor the feed for each species of livestock. Depending on whether it is for cattle, goats, poultry or fish they will then add some extra ingredients, like dried fish (if the feed is for fish or poultry).
The trainees also learned that when you want to use a base mix for fish, you need to consider a few things. Farmers rear up to 6 different species of fish. Two species are surface feeders, two feed in the middle layer, and two species are bottom feeders. As you want the feed to be eaten by all fish, the mix should be milled to a course flour. When ground too fine, the feed will float and be available to the surface feeders only.
One other thing the team of trainees learned was that for fish you can use groundnut oil cake or cotton seed oil cake, but you should never use coconut oil cake (which is readily available and cheap in coastal India). Why? Well, if coconut oil cake is used in the base mix, two days after feeding the fish, an oily film will develop, blocking the pond from sunlight and oxygen and slowly killing the fish. The household can still use coconout oil cake in base feeds intended for livestock.
Clearly, oil cakes are not all the same and not all are interchangeable.
Good farmer training videos should present a range of different options and locally available resources, but they should also warn farmers of any possible risks. Videos for farmers should always say why an option will (or wonât work), as in this case: donât feed coconut to your fish or the oil will block their sunlight and kill them!
Related video
Preparing low-cost concentrate feed
To watch the video in French, click here.
To watch the video in Tamil, click here.
To watch the video in Bangla, click here.
