The Experience of ITDG in Participatory Development of the Donkey-drawn Plough in North Darfur, Western Sudan

Mohammed Majzoub Fidiel

 

Abstract

Introduction

Context

The Technology Development Process

Results and Impact

Lessons Learnt

Conclusion

Questions for Debate

References

Annex: Glossary of Local Terms

 

Abstract

 

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.

 

Top

 

Introduction

 

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:

 

  1. Review of secondary data, most of which are listed in the references
  2. Community workshops involving the following community-based organisations (CBOs):

·        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.

  1. Working on the basis of major project documents: reports written by Simon Croxton, the first expatriate engineer with the project, based on monitoring data gathered by the national engineer, Mohammed Siddig Suliman, who still works with the project; and the first draft of the process documentation compiled by Abdelmajd Kgojali. The draft served as a base for the present paper, and information was added according to the case-study format recommended by the Advancing PTD workshop organisers.

 

Top

Context

Geography and Climate

The Farming System

The Kebkabiya Smallholders Project

 

Geography and Climate

Context

Top

 

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.

 

The Farming System

Access to Land and Size of Holding

Cropping Patterns

Main Constraints to Farming

Context

Top

 

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.

 

Access to Land and Size of Holding

The Farming System

Top

 

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.

 

Cropping Patterns

The Farming System

Top

 

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.

 

Main Constraints to Farming

The Farming System

Top

 

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.

 

The Kebkabiya Smallholders Project

Context

Top

 

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.

 

Top

 

The Technology Development Process

The History of Animal Traction in the Area

The Role played by Bilateral Government Development Projects

The Role played by Oxfam

Involvement of ITDG

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

Top

 

The History of Animal Traction in the Area

 

The Technology Development Process

Top

 

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 Role played by Bilateral Government Development Projects

 

The Technology Development Process

Top

 

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 Role played by Oxfam

The Technology Development Process

Top

 

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.

 

Involvement of ITDG

 

The Technology Development Process

Top

 

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:

  1. Developing an animal-traction technology that uses the donkey as source of draught power and that suits the area and the farmers’ needs. To do this, ITDG conducted a technical survey to collect information about the status of animal traction in the area and the technologies available.
  2. Conducting a socio-economic survey to obtain information relevant to the use of animal traction by farmers practising rainfed agriculture, with special attention to the possibilities of using donkeys as draught animals. The survey started in March 1989 and ended in early 1990 because of the upsurge of tribal conflict in the area.

 

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.

 

The Process of Participatory Plough Development

The Approach

Designing and Developing the ARD Chisel Plough

Designing and Developing the Mouldboard (the Kebkabiya Plough)

Developing a Suitable Harness

The Technology Development Process

Top

 

The Approach

 

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

Top

 

Designing and Developing the ARD Chisel Plough

 

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

Top

Designing and Developing the Mouldboard (the Kebkabiya Plough)

 

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

Top

Developing a Suitable Harness

 

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.