Mohammed Majzoub Fidiel
The
Technology Development Process
Annex:
Glossary of Local Terms
This case study documents the process of developing animal-drawn ploughs
in North Darfur, Western Sudan. It also reflects on how this process led to
strengthening farmers’ and blacksmiths’ capacities to engage in PTD and
attracted the interest of formal institutions of agricultural extension and
training in this approach to technology development. The process followed a
logical sequence of consulting available literature and looking into previous
experiences in the surrounding geographical areas and as far as the United
Kingdom. It also drew on the valuable inputs of local blacksmiths (who made the
ploughs), project engineers and the farmers themselves, the end users of the
product. The impact of the new ploughs on the livelihoods of the people in the
study area is also discussed.
The experience started in 1988/89 in the Kebkabiya area under the
Oxfam-supported Kebkabiya Smallholders Project (KSP), which was later extended
by the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) into two more areas,
Jebel Si and Dar Elsalam, under the project Linking Indigenous Knowledge
Support (LINKS). In 1998, when a further extension of LINKS started under the
name Darfur Livelihood Integrated Project (DARLIVE), the animal-traction work
was placed under its auspices, and the Azagarfa and Kutum areas were added.
This case study of the development and dissemination of animal-drawn
ploughs is meant to contribute to institutionalising the PTD approach within
Sudan. The study was developed in a participatory way involving local people
through the following activities and methods:
·
Azagarfa Blacksmiths
Society
·
Azagarfa Village
Development Committee (VDC)
·
Kassara Blacksmiths Society
·
Kassara VDC
·
Jebel Si VDC
·
Shouba VDC
·
Kebkabiya Smallholders
Charitable Society (KSCS)
Group interviews were conducted with some CBO
committees. Individual interviews were also conducted with selected community
members and with project and government staff.
The
Kebkabiya Smallholders Project
The Greater Darfur Region, with a population of 3.5 million people, is
divided into three states: North, West and South Darfur. North Darfur lies in the Sahel zone on the
southern edge of the Sahara desert and has a population of about 1.4 million,
with 70% or around 159,000 families living in poverty. Forty percent of these
families are vulnerable to disasters such as drought, loss of animals etc; the
other 60% are constantly threatened by food insecurity. The area is highly
vulnerable to drought and is characterised by extreme remoteness, poor
communications, poor infrastructure and poor public services.
Kebkabiya is one of the four provinces in North Darfur. Provinces are
divided into local councils and village councils. Each village council is
formed of 2–7 villages. Kebkabiya Rural Council, the project area, is situated
in the southwest of the State at the bottom of the mountain known as Jabal
Marra.
Most of the area in the northern part of the State is desert with 10–12
arid months per year; the southern and eastern parts are semi-desert with 8–9
arid months and suffer from low and highly
variable rainfall. This ranges between 75 and 400 mm/year, with extreme
variations in annual distribution. Kebkabiya Rural Council experiences 9
arid months a year; annual rainfall is 350–400 mm. The area was hard hit by
successive droughts since the early 1980s (Table 1), resulting in a long-term
deterioration in the people’s livelihood base, reflected in a severe decline in
crop production, mass death of livestock, reduced range productivity and
widespread ecological degradation.
Within North Darfur, Kebkabiya Rural Council has more agricultural
potential, especially on the wadi
areas of seasonal water flow. The economy is based on rainfed subsistence
farming. The main crops are millet, sorghum, okra, cowpea, watermelons (mostly
for seeds), karkadeh (hibiscus) and
sesame. The better-off farmers normally practise dry-season small-scale
irrigation on alluvial soils of wadi
land where the water table is high. The main irrigated crops are chickpea,
bean, onion, tomato and other fresh vegetables. Poor families without access to
irrigation facilities grow wet-season onion, tomato and okra. Groundnut was
introduced later as a result of the project and the introduction of the plough.
As one goes south, livestock decrease is importance but still remain
essential for the economy. Goats and sheep are raised as a means of saving and
investment; donkeys were used mainly for transportation and only recently as
draught animals. The main tools used for cultivation are hand hoes.
Off-farm activities include collection of grass fodder, building
materials, firewood and wild fruits; charcoal making; petty trading and
handicrafts. Opportunities for non-farm income are limited to seasonal or
semi-permanent migration of men to mechanised-farming areas, urban centres in
central Sudan and abroad to Libya. Remittances from migrant relatives are the
primary source of off-farm income.
Access to Land and Size of
Holding
The farm unit is based on a nuclear family or families including married
sons who, after three years of marriage, will have their own household. Women
head 25–40% of the 5000 households in the area.
Land for
cultivation is the basic resource of the households. Tenure types include
communal or tribal land, family- or clan-owned land, village-owned land and
individually owned land. In Kebkabiya
Rural Council, access to land can easily be gained through inheritance, rent,
sharecropping or borrowing from relatives or friends for 1–2 years. Land is not
rented or sold in the area. Ninety percent of the women in the area own fields
and have land titles. The main constraint to the amount of
land cultivated is labour availability. The most successful households are the
larger polygamous ones.
Each family owns several plots, each ranging between 2 and 4 makhammas (1.5–3 ha). The average size
of holding ranges between 2 and 10 makhammas
(3–7.3 ha). The dominant soil type is the hard-surface sandy loam locally
called nagaa or gardud. Many families in the area own wadi land, which is more fertile but more limited in area than the
other land types.
In Jebel Si, which was included in the second project phase (LINKS), good
cropland is scarce because of the mountainous topography. People cultivate the
mountain slopes on terraces built with stones. Gardud or wadi land is
very limited and farm sizes range between 2 and 4 makhammas. In Dar Elsalam, the other area included in the second
phase, soils are predominantly sandy (goz)
and sandy loam (gardud) crossed by
few seasonal streams where alluvial soil dominates. Farmers grow millet,
sorghum and okra.
Millet, and to a very limited extent, sesame and sorghum are grown on
sandy and sandy loam soils. Millet is dominant in the three project areas and
is the main staple food. It is grown mainly for home consumption and covers 80%
of the area cultivated annually. Tomato, okra, chickpea, cowpea and groundnut
are grown both for consumption and cash on wadi
land. Some farmers have started to grow tomato, okra and groundnut on the gardud soil in terraces.
Traditionally, millet, sorghum, sesame, cowpea and watermelon were
intercropped. This practice was increasingly abandoned because of the decrease
in rainfall and, more recently, the introduction of the donkey plough, which
reduced the amount of labour needed for land preparation.
Farmers in North Darfur face three main constraints: poor availability
of seed, inadequate labour and lack of extension services.
The project and its partner Oxfam realised the need for extension
services and offered to build up a participatory extension system. The Village
Development Committees (VDCs) nominated some of their members, who were then
trained as Village Extension Agents (VEA) to deliver advice and services. The
VDCs and their VEAs have played an important role in the PTD approach: they
convinced their communities to take part in the process, they assisted in
nominating farmers and allocating land for experimental and demonstration
plots, and they liaised between their community farmers, the project engineers
and the blacksmiths throughout the process. The VDCs initially started as
informal groups of active community members. The project then helped them to
register themselves as legal CBOs.
After the major drought and famine in 1984/85, Oxfam came to the area to
give relief support. The main beneficiaries were the small subsistence farmers.
Oxfam started a seed distribution programme to help people secure their food
requirements in the 1985/86 season. Through continuous dialogue with farmers,
the agency became aware of the main constraints in farming identified by the
community: seedbed preparation (ploughing and ridging), planting and weeding.
Most of the poor farmers cultivated sloping land with hard-surface sandy loam
soil that restricted water infiltration and led to runoff. Under such
conditions, cultivation with the traditional hand hoe is difficult and
time-consuming. This causes much hardship for women, whom perform 75% of the
cultivation operations, and has adverse impacts on productivity and the
income-generation capacity of the households.
Although the average household sows 2–4 makhammas of millet, it manages to weed only 2 makhammas. The maximum period available for timely weeding is three
weeks. The average production per makhammas
is about 3 sacks. This means that the average household produces from 2 makhammas only 6 sacks of millet or only
half the average annual requirement per family (12 sacks).
The long time
spent on cultivation coupled with the hardship involved in the work and the
effort needed for other household tasks exert mental and physical pressures on
women, adversely affecting their health. It also prevents other family members
involved in the farming operations from working for better-off farmers after
cultivating their own fields and from non-farm income-generation opportunities.
Given the above
constraints and farmers’ needs, the Kebkabiya Smallholders Project (KSP) was
designed and implementation started in 1986. The ultimate project goals were to
empower the KSP communities and to strengthen the relative position of the
poorer men and women. The intermediate objectives were to:
To achieve
sustainable livelihood security and empowerment, the project’s designated
interventions were: the operation of a seed-bank facility to secure sustainable
supply of seed; pest control; extension; and widespread introduction of animal
traction.
In view of the
droughts that had affected livelihoods and agricultural production, the local
farmers were well aware of the importance of increasing yields and
productivity. The project regarded animal traction as central for realising the
three intermediate objectives of food security, control over resources and
empowerment. The plough was a clear option, especially since some of the
farmers in the project area had seen the benefits of the camel plough used by
affluent farmers in adjacent areas and when they seasonally migrated to work in
the areas of two large development projects: Jabal Marra and Western Savannah
(see below). Farmers clearly gave priority to the plough.
The History of Animal Traction
in the Area
The Role played by Bilateral
Government Development Projects
The Process of Participatory
Plough Development
Distribution
of Ploughs and Training of Farmers
Dissemination
of the Plough in the Project Area
Scaling Up Plough Dissemination
The
Technology Development Process
In the 1960s,
nomadic camel traders brought a buffalo mouldboard plough from Egypt to Greater
Darfur. These traders are based in Kass town in Southern Darfur, 300 km from El
Fashir. In the 1970s, traditional Darfur blacksmiths modified the plough to
suit the camel. In the late 1970s, the plough was used in rainfed plots but
only by the few farmers who could afford to rent or buy it. In the mid-80s, a
steep rise in the value of camels led to an upsurge in camel theft. The use of
camels became more and more unpopular, and the focus shifted to donkeys.
The
Technology Development Process
The Jabal Marra
Rural Development Project (JMRDP) started in 1971 with a main objective to
develop farming in Jebel Marra area. One of its interventions was the
development of animal-traction technology. The project adapted the design of
the traditional mouldboard camel plough to suit the loamy clay soils of South
Darfur, using the donkey as source of draught power. Also the Western Savannah Development
Corporation (WSDC), which operated from 1974 to 1994 in Darfur, did research in
animal traction and developed the donkey-drawn seeder/weeder.
The
Technology Development Process
Oxfam’s early
work in Kebkabiya built on these experiences. Implements designed as copies of
those used by JMRDP and WSDC were tested in Kebkabiya in 1986 and 1987 and
proved unsuccessful. In late 1987,
the Oxfam animal-traction officer was sent to Britain for further training in
animal-traction technology. He brought back a mouldboard donkey plough. Oxfam
contacted a blacksmith in Nyala named Halatu to train seven Zaghawa blacksmiths
from Kebkabiya area to make the plough. The aim was to transfer knowledge and
skills in animal-traction technology to the village blacksmiths. Acquiring
knowledge and skills for a technology demanded by all local farmers was
expected to empower the blacksmiths.
To be able to experiment with the seven mouldboard ploughs, Oxfam
established three demonstration farms in four villages in the north, west,
south and east of the Kebkabiya area on land allocated by the village councils.
In each village, the selected farm was situated on the main road to be seen by
all passing farmers. The local extension agent cultivated the demonstration
farm and was paid by the project. He also used the plough to cultivate part of
his own farm and lent the plough to other farmers who showed an interest in
trying it. Very limited success was achieved with this plough. Oxfam and the
pioneer farmers concluded that it was too heavy for the donkey and did not
speed up cultivation significantly. Nevertheless, farmers saw it as a step
forward. A small number of farmers in the demonstration farm villages showed
interest in it the following season. By mid-1988, it became clear that the
limited experience with animal-drawn implements was constrained progress in the
project’s animal-traction programme. For this reason, ITDG was contracted to
provide technical support in identifying, testing and developing a suitable
donkey implement for ploughing.
The
Technology Development Process
ITDG was
involved in the project from mid-1988 until 1990 and then again from 1992 to
date. Simon Croxton was employed by ITDG to undertake the work. He, in turn,
recruited Mohammed Siddig Suliman on secondment basis from the Regional
Ministry of Agriculture (MoA). The specific tasks of ITDG were to:
This third
objective was to be achieved by working with farmers to ensure users’
participation in developing the innovation to meet their needs and working with
and training local blacksmiths so that they could produce the implements
without external support. The blacksmiths were regarded as the only option to
ensure local manufacturing and maintenance of the ploughs, an element that was
key for the sustainability of the technology.
ITDG’s
intervention involved two aspects:
The surveys
were a useful means for project staff to build relationships with and learn
more about the communities with which they work. The surveys revealed that
there was considerable interest in the use of donkey ploughs in the project
area. All farmers who had had used them or had seen them being used by others
stated that they wanted to use them, but seemed unclear as to what the actual
benefits would be. The most commonly perceived benefits were improved water
infiltration, less drudgery and easing the labour bottleneck during weeding. A
large number of poorer households had no donkeys. There was considerable
borrowing and lending of donkeys but it was far easier to borrow a donkey for
light work and for a short period than for heavy work like cultivation. Women
headed many of the poorer households. The proportion of female-headed
households without donkeys was particularly high. Women household heads had had
the least experience with donkey plough (this included seeing a plough
working). Even in villages near demonstration plots, the number of women who
had seen ploughs in operation was relatively small.
Designing
and Developing the ARD Chisel Plough
Designing
and Developing the Mouldboard (the Kebkabiya Plough)
The
Technology Development Process
ITDG adopted the following approach in the process of designing and
developing the animal-drawn implements:
From the
beginning, the ITDG team was aware of the great restrictions on the
possibilities open for implement design. Effectively, the need was to identify
implements that were:
This meant that
it was necessary to look for a chisel-tined implement suitable for cultivating
light sandy loam that forms a hard surface crust. Such as implement could reach
the farmer at a reasonable cost, could be manufactured by village blacksmiths,
did not require a large amount of steel and could be pulled by a donkey.
Although the mouldboard is not the implement most suitable to the area, it was
decided to improve the current version developed by Oxfam in Halatu’s workshop.
The Process of Participatory
Plough Development
The
Technology Development Process
In order to
reduce the need for large quantities of scarce steel, a wooden-frame implement
was thought to be most suitable. In December 1988, ITDG hired a consultant engineer
to develop and test some basic ideas for a simple wooden-framed implement based
on a Middle Eastern ard (an ancient tool dating back to the earliest days of
settled farming). The Ethiopians have their own version of it, the maresha. This work was done in England
at the University of East Anglia’s Rural Technology Unit (RTU). Experiments
were made with various frames to develop a short-beamed implement that could be
drawn by a single animal. Once a frame had been designed, various tines – all
simple enough to be made by local blacksmiths – were tested behind a trained
mule and the power requirements for the different models were compared.
Finally, RTU identified two tine designs as showing promise and the tines were
taken to Sudan to use as patterns for blacksmiths in the Kebkabiya area to
copy.
One of these
tines was a scaled-down version of an Ethiopian maresha. The other was a simple chisel plough with sweeps. A
further brief evaluation of these in Kebkabiya demonstrated the suitability of
the tine with sweeps, and no further work was carried out with the maresha, which the English tests had
shown to have higher draught requirements (i.e. more suitable to be drawn by
oxen, as is traditionally the case in Ethiopia, than by donkeys).
The next stage involved
working with blacksmiths in Kerikir village, near Kebkabiya, to show them the
design and to see if they could manufacture the implement. The wooden frame is
very simple, consisting of two poles, and it would be possible for farmers to
make. However, certain parameters have to be met in its construction, the most
important ones being the angle at which the tine will penetrate the soil and to
ensure that the implement is symmetrical around its line of draught. As farmers
had no experience with this implement, ITDG felt that the blacksmiths should be
encouraged to make both the steel and the wooden parts in the first instance.
It may be possible to encourage farmers to make their own frames at a later
stage, once they have some experience with it. This would greatly reduce the
price of the implement, as farmers would have to purchase only the steel tip
from blacksmiths. At this stage, all work was disrupted and delayed by the
upsurge in tribal conflict in 1989.
Work on the ard
chisel plough was resumed after the 1989 wet season, this time focused on
ensuring that the local blacksmiths were fully acquainted with its design. Some
modification to the tine was necessary, as the blacksmiths found it difficult
to copy exactly the design made by the English blacksmith. By now, the Zaghawa
blacksmiths in Keriker were far more interested in the work than they had been
initially and developed their own solution to the fabrication problem. The
final cost of the ard was a little higher than expected, mainly because the
blacksmiths were now aware of how valuable they were to the project and
insisted on a fairly high charge for their labour. However, the ard still cost
only one third the price of a mouldboard plough. The project felt that paying a
slightly high price to the Zaghawa blacksmiths set no undesirable precedent.
They were clearly doing no more than exploiting their monopoly position, and
this advantage would disappear over time as the design become known by more
blacksmiths and there was more competition. Their enthusiasm remained high, and
the blacksmiths were now coming up with ideas of their own. The job of project
staff shifted to trying to maintain steady progress in the work, rather than
having to show them designs. It was a clear step towards local institutionalisation
of the PTD approach when the blacksmiths themselves began testing their
modifications and products in the field near the village. By the end of March
1990, 20 ards had been manufactured for distribution to farmers for training
before the onset of rains, so that the new implements could be used for
cultivation in the 1990 season.
The Process of Participatory
Plough Development
The
Technology Development Process
The mouldboard
plough is not a particularly suitable implement for a low rainfall area such as
Kebkabiya. It inverts the soil so that soil moisture is lost to a greater
degree than when some form of chisel plough is used. This is not such a serious
problem on wadi soils where moisture
inputs (through flooding or irrigation) and moisture-holding capacity (because
of higher clay content) are relatively high. It is of far greater importance on
lighter goz soils where the
moisture-holding properties of the soil are poor. If these implements are used
on goz soils, conditions for crop
growth become critically dependent on subsequent rainfall patterns. A further
disadvantage of the mouldboard plough is that it has a higher draught
requirement than, for example, a simple tined implement. In addition, the
mouldboard requires a higher quantity of steel. Steel is always in short supply
in Darfur. This is true in the major urban centres of Nyala and El Fashir. It
is even more difficult to obtain regular steel supplies in a remote rural area
like Kebkabiya.
Despite these
disadvantages, it was decided to continue with the development of a more
suitable mouldboard version because there were other factors to be considered.
Firstly, the farmers and blacksmiths needed several alternatives to experiment
with, so that they could choose the most appropriate technology option. In the
early stages of introducing a new technology, experimenting with several
alternatives can lead to good and quick results. Secondly, it was clear that
the training of blacksmiths in manufacturing the ard would take some time. It
was doubtful if large numbers of ards would be ready in time for the next wet
season (June–September).
A further
factor influenced the decision to continue developing the mouldboard plough.
This was the assessment that the project was suffering from a credibility problem
among farmers with regard to plough supply. Farmers had expressed very strong
interest in animal traction and knew that the project had been experimenting
with various ploughs for the previous three years without coming up with
tangible benefits. Although the suitability of the mouldboard was doubtful, the
project felt that it was better to continue with the development of a model
that could be manufactured locally. This would provide the most reliable way of
ensuring that a reasonable number of ploughs were available in time for the
next growing season. It was felt that, in an ideal world, the mouldboard would
have not been promoted, but events had overtaken the project. The JMRDP had
begun to work in the Kebkabiya area and was promoting its donkey-drawn
mouldboards and offering them for sale through their extension agents. The
mouldboard was the type of implement with which most farmers and blacksmiths
were familiar. These ploughs were available in Nyala and would almost certainly
begin arriving in Kebkabiya in small numbers. ITDG felt that it was preferable
to maintain some control over the manufacture, distribution and use of the
ploughs and this could be best done if the project were active in this field of
work. The project could not impose a technology on farmers and blacksmiths. The
most positive approach was to provide them with a choice of implements.
Work on the mouldboard was already in progress when ITDG involvement
began. Experimentation in the 1987 wet season with the latest mouldboard version
developed in Halatu’s workshop proved that the plough performed poorly. Farmers
with demonstration plots and other farmers who used borrowed ploughs observed
that the plough was too heavy for the donkey, it was not steady and stable on
the ground (it jumped out of its path), the mainframe was weak and bent during
operation, and ploughing was slow.
Closer examination of the plough design by ITDG revealed the following:
Work continued
to correct the above-mentioned defects and to develop a mouldboard plough that
suited the local conditions, met farmers’ requirements and could be
manufactured by village blacksmiths. By early 1989, the mouldboard plough had
been improved. It was lighter than the Jebel Marra donkey mouldboard, with a
longer landsite made of steel section and requiring no welding to construct.
The project’s
animal-traction officer had built up a good working relation with two of the
Zaghawa blacksmiths who were among the first seven blacksmiths trained in
Halatu’s workshop in Nyala. Both of them were based in Kerikir village near
Kebkabiya town. They were more responsive to the idea of working with the
project than the blacksmiths based directly in Kebkabiya who had also been
trained in Halatu’s workshop. The town blacksmiths were more interested in
continuing to serve the town dwellers in making gates, windows and hand tools.
Although the
Zaghawa blacksmiths were skilled artisans, the process of developing a suitable
mouldboard design took some time. It was necessary not only to avoid welded
joints but also to use the steel section that was available. A prototype of a
frame that used 2-inch waterpipe was produced, but supplies of this then dried
up. The Agricultural Bank of Sudan (ABS) had a stock of steel in Nyala, which
had been provided by the EEC as part of an aid package. The steel was marked
for use in producing animal-drawn implements. The particular steel sections and
sheeting that had been imported were not of suitable dimensions to produce the
donkey mouldboard, but this was the only reliable source of steel in Darfur at
the time. The design had to be further modified so that the available steel
could be used. Moreover, there was considerable competition for this steel.
Both WSDC and JMRDP required large quantities for their programmes and it was
only after some negotiation that the ABS in Nyala was persuaded to allow the
Kebkabiya project a reasonable amount of the steel. Steel pricing was also
quite variable. The method followed by ABS was to sell at prices fairly close
to the market price in Nyala, which fluctuated depending on supply and demand.
Accordingly, ABS developed a price structure that seemed to change each time a
new purchase was made. Despite these problems, steel was obtained and at a
price that meant that the ploughs could be sold at a similar price to those
available through JMRDP. The fact that steel was available only through the
limited and non-permanent supplies of ABS underlined the non-sustainable aspect
of using a design that requires large quantities of steel for each implement.
At this stage,
it became clear that the Zaghawa blacksmiths in Kerikir, being few in number
and busy making the ard, would not be able to manufacture a large quantity of
ploughs before the next wet season. The project decided to commission Halatu
(the Nyala blacksmith) to mass-produce 100 ploughs because, at that time, he
was the only person able to accomplish the work in the time left. Halatu is an
astute businessman and drives a hard bargain, and some fairly tough
negotiations were necessary to obtain a fair price for this work. In addition,
the standard of the work left much to be desired and some of the ploughs had to
be modified locally after delivery. Actually, the 100 ploughs made by Halatu
resembled more the JMRDP plough than the plough developed locally by the
project together with the blacksmiths and farmers. This had happened in spite
of the fact that the ITDG national engineer spent long periods in Nyala
supervising work progress and quality control. This experience reinforced the
conviction that future plough manufacture would be far more satisfactory if
local blacksmiths could do it.
Before the
beginning of the wet season, the 100 ploughs were ready for distribution but
the work was disrupted by the tribal conflict and all staff left the project
area by June 1989.The ploughs were not distributed in that season. In early
1990, work resumed and it was decided to commission another batch of ploughs
from Halatu. The ABS still had a small amount of steel. The project wanted to
obtain as much of the remainder as possible, which turned out to be enough for
another 100 ploughs. This time, Halatu was asked to make mouldboard ploughs that
were copies of the JMRDP design. Halatu had more experience with this design
and it was hoped that the quality of the finished product would therefore be
better. It would also provide further insights on plough performance, as
farmers could then test three designs (two mouldboard designs and the ard).
The Process of Participatory
Plough Development
The
Technology Development Process
The project had
only one leather harness stuffed with straw. This was used to harness the
project’s own donkey working on demonstration plots. The original idea had been
to copy this design, which is similar to the one for horses used for carting in
Nyala and El Fashir. It had originally been envisaged that local
leather-workers could make collars of this type. However, the project’s collar
did not fit the project’s donkey well: it was too big and needed constant
adjustment while the animal was working. This underlined the drawbacks of using
this design, which must be made-to-measure for the individual animal or must be
modified (and made yet more complex) to allow adjustment for different animals.
When the project was working with the blacksmiths in Keriker, the plough needed
to be tried out in a nearby field. The project’s collar was not available and
the donkey was hitched to the plough with ropes attached to a riding saddle.
Although this method is not an efficient way of utilising the donkey’s power,
it worked relatively well and demonstrated the poor performance of the
ill-fitting leather collar. Pricing the leather harness also showed that the
high cost would make its widespread use unlikely. Therefore, simple harnesses were
investigated.
The project team thought that a breast-band harness would be the best
bet, as this style of harness suits equines (e.g. donkeys), which – unlike
bovines (e.g. oxen) – can pull from the chest. A breast-band harness is easier
to make than a collar, and it is fairly simple to ensure a good fit on the
animal. The main criterion is to ensure that the animal’s windpipe is not
constricted. Various materials were considered. Nylon webbing about 2 inches
wide was available in the market. It is an inexpensive material that is widely
used to tie baggage to camels. It is quite soft and therefore preferable to
leather, which tends to become hard and crack as a result of the animal’s sweat
drying on it, causing sores to develop on the animals as a result of chaffing.
ITDG used the nylon webbing to make a breast-band harness. A double layer,
stitched along the edges and stuffed with cotton, rags or straw, crosses the
donkey’s chest. This is attached to single straps across the donkey’s shoulder
to keep the harness in place. The traces to the implement are tied to each end
of the strip around the chest. This harness works well, is easy to adjust and
is now being promoted among farmers using donkey ploughs.