Overview and highlights of the FACASI project

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!