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Labor

Understanding the Labor of Peanut Cultivation

The majority of smallholder farmers in Mali and Senegal farm their fields by hand, a physically taxing and time intensive process. Although improved cultivation methods can increase yields significantly, farmers are still unable to apply myAgro methods in all of their fields because of the additional labor required. To improve farmer adoption of yield-improving management techniques, myAgro is developing tools so farmers can work faster and easier.

To understand a farmer’s most pressing needs, myAgro recently held a meeting with a group of peanut farmers to discuss where the highest burdens (time and physical labor) in peanut cultivation occur.

burden debate peanut

 

In the photo above, participants are arranging pictures of stages of peanut cultivation in order by physical burden and time burden, creating a baseline to compare prototype tools to. This exercise is a form of “card sort“, a human-centered design activity. Observing the whole process offers richer information than, for example, a traditional survey; myAgro staff are able to see which cards evoke a disagreement in the group or which are flip-flopped frequently, perhaps suggesting that they are particularly close in value.

 

peanut burden ranking

Independent of the order of cards, myAgro staff also asked participants to describe the level of physical burden of each card by choosing a representation of how they felt when they finished. This was on a four-point scale from “great and full of energy” to “very tired and in pain”. In this exercise, participants indicated five cards had the highest level of burden. This corresponds to all of the red and orange groups above. Two cards had the second highest level of burden (Shelling and Sorting by Quality). The ranking exercise showed that the overall physical burden remains significant throughout the entire peanut cultivation process. It’s also noteworthy that many steps have significant potential for burden reduction, even those mid-ranked in the card sort.

What is myAgro’s Innovation Team going to do about it now? There are plans to pilot 1) a new package to help women save for hiring labor for land clearing and 2) tool prototypes for peanut planting and weeding. Results will be shared in the near future!