Helping the rice farmers in Ngoketunjia, Cameroon

July 2014: Introducing rotary weeders to Ndop, Cameroon

This year we introduced rotary weeders to Cameroon to help the farmers; the weeders not only to reduce the time taken for the farmers to weed their farms and to reduce the extremely strenuous physical labour that the farmers have to put into their farms; but more importantly these should stimulate greater plant growth and productivity through active soil aeration and pruning of roots near the surface (that stimulates the growth of larger and deeper root systems).

The farmers have recently started to use the rotary weeders and with the rotary weeders the time taken to work the same plot was reduced from 2.5 hours to 45 minutes !

We introduced two models; one with two wheels and the second with one wheel. The farmers found that the model with the two wheels was best used in the early stages of farming when the plant roots were not deep.

The second model however with the single wheel; was easy to use and resulted in large time savings. The farmers are extremely enthusiastic about this model.

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