At first glance weeds may not seem like the biggest concern for farmers in West Africa — Farmers are faced with seemingly larger environmental problems like an ongoing drought and nutrient-depleted soils. However, myAgro female farmers who grow peanuts said weeds were a serious issue — by competing for water, light, soil nutrients, and space, weeds reduce crop yields which affect their overall income.
While weeding can combat this problem, women noted that weeding by hand was one of the most time and labor intensive parts of their workloads — and that it leaves them feeling both tired and in pain.
The myAgro Tools team has been working hard to find a solution to this issue. Enter the weed-cutter: an oscillating hoe blade mounted on a single-wheeled cultivator. The wheel keeps the blade at a consistent depth, approximately 1cm below the soil surface and with this wheeled tool, farmers only need to walk through their field pushing the cutter between each row of new plants to remove weeds from their field.
A farmer tests a prototype of the weed-cutter during a focus group in Fall 2015
The myAgro weed cutter works by slicing through the roots of weeds just beneath the surface of the soil – killing some weeds outright in their vulnerable post-germination phase, and keeping the others small and weak until the peanuts can hold the field. Cutting through the soil has two main advantages over upheaving deeper chunks like a plow would: it avoids stirring up new weed seeds from the deeper soil, and it takes significantly less force, because very little dirt is actually displaced. In plowed fields, one person can easily push the weed-cutter at a normal walking pace without significant effort.
Similar tools (sometimes called wheel-plows or push-plows) have been used on a smaller scale in several countries, and are enjoying a renaissance among organic/small-scale gardeners in the United States and Europe. However, they are not available for farmers in Mali. myAgro’s innovation not only enables farmers to access to these timesaving tools, but because it is made using single-sized iron bars that are readily available in Mali, they are also significantly cheaper than other models.
In a myAgro test plot, weed cover was reduced by 91% at the end of a 4-week trial period using the weeding tool once a week. Even utilizing the weeder only once at the mid-point of the trial period still resulted in a 73% reduction, from 128-weeds/m2 to 29-weeds/m2. A reduction in weed cover means that young peanut plants will get more sunlight, water and fertilizer – ultimately allowing peanut plants to grow stronger and increasing harvest yields for farmers.
Through focus groups and continued trials, myAgro staff will continue to adapt the tool to the conditions in Mali, making changes to increase its robustness, efficiency and ease-of-use, with the ultimate goal of introducing the weed-cutter to all myAgro farmers. This powerful tool will not only save our farmers time and energy, but will also increase their income, allowing them to purchase crucial household items for their families.
