The title might be a bit misleading – weeding is not a fun activity whether you’re a gardener in San Francisco or a farmer in Mali. It is however, incredibly important. Weeding peanut fields clears and opens up the land to be better fertilized by the flowers that drop into the soil and create peanuts. For cereals, weeding before side-dressing is very important; otherwise the weeds will benefit the most out of this important resource.
Despite the importance of weeding, most farmers don’t weed their fields as well as they should or on-time. To help the point of weeding “stick” our myAgro team tried a few weeks ago to at least make our trainings fun and unforgettable to ensure a good follow through.
The weeding role play goes as follows: 2 farmers sit near a bowl full of marbles. The marbles represent fertilizer and the farmers represent weeds and plants. The “weeds” use two hands to grab the fertilizer and the plants use one – since there are always more weeds than plants.
In a quick minute, the bowl of marbles – fertilizer – is finished and everyone laughs as they realize that the weeds, every farmer’s enemy, has won the most fertilizer.
The game is fast and portable enough that the field agent can even do this exercise in a farmer’s field. Having this visual is hard to forget and for our farmers, it drives home the point of not wasting fertilizer by not weeding enough or in time.
