overview and highlights of the facasi project
TRANSCRIPT
Frédéric Baudron and colleagues
Rome, 13th January 2015
FACASI: overview and highlights from
agronomy / engineering
Increasing labour shortages (rural-urban migration, HIV/AIDS, ageing population)
Declining number of draughtanimals (biomass shortage, drought, diseases)
High labour drudgery
Gender implications
Unattractive to the youth
Farm power: a major limiting factor to productivity in SSA?
Farm power: the forgotten
resource in SSA?
Evidence from Western Kenya
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
< 150 150 to 250 > 250
Wo
me
n l
ab
ou
r(%
to
tal
pe
rso
nd
ays
)
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
< 150 150 to 250 > 250
Hir
ed
la
bo
ur
(%
tota
l p
ers
on
da
ys
)
Labour invested in farming (persondays)
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
Type 1 Type 2 Type 3
Labour invested in farming (persondays)
< 150 150 to 250 > 250
19%
32%23%
27% Men
Women
Children
Hired
Land preparation: the most energy-demanding farming operation (Lal, 2004)
CA typically reduces energy requirements by half compared to conventional land preparation (Lal, 2004)
CA is mainly adopted in mechanized agriculture (Derpsch and Friedrich, 2009) where reduction in fuel and machinery costs is a major incentive (Kassam et al., 2009)
Major incentive in the less mechanized systems in developing countries: early planting (arising from the reduced number of operations required to prepare the land)(Haggblade and Tembo, 2003)
Primary purpose of CA: establishing a crop with as little energy (= power × time) as possible
CA as an energy-saving
technology
CA & Small Mech: Synergies
Soil inversion is the most power intensive operation.
Its suppression makes the use of lower powered, more
affordable and easier to maintain tractors possible.
CA with a Two-Wheel Tractor:
options commercially available
Strip tillage Direct-seeding: 2 rows Direct-seeding: 1 row
Dramatic reduction in the time
needed to establish a crop…
0
20
40
60
80
100
Conv land
prep +
planting
Conv
planting
Danyang
2BFG
VMP National
ZT
Fitarelli 2R Fitarelli 1R Morrisson
seeder
Tim
e (
ho
ur
ha
-1)
(Data from Hawassa, Ethiopia)
Low fuel consumption
5 to 10 L ha-1
Yield advantage for small grain
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Mechanical seeding Sowing by hand
Yie
ld (
t/h
a)
Grain
Straw
Conventional
1.6 t/ha additional grain
Including for teff!
But not true ‘best bet’ for SSA…
Biophysical specificities
Dry, hard, stony fields
Uneven fields
Weed load
Socioeconomic specificities
Distance between fields
Diversity of crops
Resource constraints
… and costly equipment
Strip tillage Direct-seeding: 2 rows Direct-seeding: 1 row
US$ 772
US$ 1,649
US$ 1,156US$ 863
US$ 2,826US$ 4,120
Locally-made seeder?
???
Commercializing small mech to
resource-constrained farmers
Private rural service providers
Only few farmers will be able to purchase machines individually
Not profitable for farmers to own machines unless they provide services
Multi-purpose uses (to maximize mechanization use rates)
Linking input BM to output BM (cash flow)
Bundling of services and products (to reduce the cost of mechanization services)
Possible need of a broker (weak markets, vulnerable farmers)
Multipurpose use of 2WTs
High demand for mechanization, even at low labour wage for:
Transport
Power-intensive operations that require little human control (e.g. shelling)
Power-intensive operations that are unprofitable when unmechanized (e.g. water pumping)
Entry points?
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Pro
po
rtio
n o
f to
tal
an
nu
al
lab
ur
in
Meru
Months
< 150 mandays
150-250 mandays
> 250 mandays
WeedingSowing
HarvestingTransporting
Beyond crop establishment…
The ‘Multi-Use Sheller-thresher-
chopper-Trailer’ (MUST)
Increased visibility of small mech in
SSA
Increased visibility of small mech in
SSA
1st African Congress on CA (Lusaka,18-21 March 2014)
6th World Congress on CA (Winnipeg, 22-25 June 2014)
International Conference on Agroecology for Africa (Antananarivo, 3-7 November 2014)
IFAD - CA: overcoming the challenges to adoption and scaling-up (Rome, 13-14 January 2015)
FAO - CA: overcoming the challenges to adoption and scaling-up (Rome, 15 January 2015)
Co-funding
2 grants from CRP MAIZE:
‘Gender Matters in Farm Power’ grant (US$ 139,104 from CRP MAIZE and US$ 5,750 from KIT as cofounding)
‘Ex ante assessment of the economics of mechanization in maize based farming systems in East Africa’ grant (US$ 94,663 from CRP MAIZE)
Watanabe, Brazil: potato planters and lifter (value of US$ 6,120 )
IFAD and FAO: support to the FACASI initiative in Laikipia, Kenya
USAID AfricaRISING Ethiopia Highland
ASARECA-CRP WHEAT grant ‘Enhancing Wheat Productivity and Value Chains in Burundi and Rwanda’: wheat threshing
IFAD grant for Uganda
‘Appropriate-Scale Mechanization Consortium’ under the FtFInnovation Lab for Sustainable Intensification
AGRA grant for CA mechanization (836 acres contracted with MwailuEnterprise in Laikipia).
Thank you!