4.1 Farm work

4.1.1 Planning Farm Work

Planning farm work most of the time relies on the long standing experience of farm masters and headmasters. Sometimes this can lead to difficult situations, for example when planting time comes before the tilling or fencing is completed -which in turn means that planting is delayed and the school may be unable to harvest in time. The following shows how labour records of school farms can be used in order to plan school farm work efficiently. Figures are about a school that had an old coffee plot which was to be converted into a maize farm.

The total farming area was 6800 m².

Table 1 (p. 72) shows the labour distribution from February 17th to June 1st. Figures were compiled from the farm diaries kept for each class. Table 1 is a summary of work done. But it differs from the form used by the school. During periods when the demand for labour was high, it shows the amount of farm work done everyday. This is necessary since it is the only way to analyse in detail the difficulties encountered during this time.

Looking at table 1, what do we see?

1. Getting the farm started took about 300 hours, i.e. fencing and taking out the stumps of the old coffee trees. This accounts for 15.1% of all the work done on the farm. In subsequent years, of course, this labour will not be required.

2. The grass cut down during clearing was removed from the farm altogether. This is necessary if the whole farm area is being tilled. But when planting on the flat, one can reduce the tilling by following a minimum tillage approach as recommended by the IITA (International Institute for Tropical Agriculture) at Ibadan, i.e. tilling only the narrow strips where the maize seeds will actually be planted. The area between the rows of maize can be left untilled. This means that the rows for planting have to be pegged, ropes are used to mark the straight planting lines, and the grass is removed to the strip between them. This would save 520 hours or 16.1% of the total labour time since raking and gathering the grass is no longer required. But it does not only save labour. The grass left between the rows acts as mulch, keeping the soil temperature low, retaining moisture, and slowing down the growth of weeds.

3. Tilling only the actual planting area and leaving the space between the rows untilled reduces the amount of labour required considerably. Tilling needs a lot of labour (521.5 hours = 26.2%). Moreover, it has to be finished early in order for planting to start on time. Therefore, if labour can be saved here, it would be particularly welcome. Tilling using the minimum tillage approach would require only 323 hours. saving another 198.5 hours or nearly 10% of the total working time.

4. You will immediately see that the work could have been better distributed over the time available:

- All the work for fencing should have been done in February and early March. The way fencing was timed has a big disadvantage. It was interrupted by planting, so that the fence was left unfinished till the last day of March, because catching the correct planting time was more important. This left the farm very vulnerable during the early growth period of the maize.

All jobs not directly related to farming a particular crop should be shifted to the dry season.

- Tilling should have started earlier. This would have been possible had fencing been completed earlier, and had the school concentrated all its efforts on planting. The time taken for planting was 225 hours. Had tilling been finished on or before March 18th, the day when planting started, all the planting could have been done on that day as 238 hours were effectively spent on the farm on March 18th. The minimum tillage approach would have permitted this. Had all the time spent on raking and removing grass been used for tilling, the farm would have been almost completely tilled on March 1 8th without any other change in work organization. The first weeding is very important for maize and should be finished 10 days after planting, but in this case weeding was late and too prolonged.

- As far as possible, several different operations or jobs should be done on a farm at the same time rather than just one. This means you can have several small groups doing different jobs rather than have all the children doing the same work. Supervision is easier, and groups can take turns at each other's work.

Table 1

Table 2

Table 2 shows how farming could have been organized along these lines:

- Clearing and fencing done at the same time,

- Tilling starts in the first days of March while fencing comes to an end in the second week of March. At planting time the whole plot has been tilled. As tilling is reduced because of the minimum tillage approach it could be done even faster than shown in table 2, let us say in five periods of farm work. This would have the advantage that planting could start as soon as the first rains fell. After planting, very little work is left. The time could now be used for lessons on the farm work done so far and for observations with the pupils, e.g. on maize germination (during the first ten days after planting) and on the growth of maize after the first weeding. Interplanting beans with the maize would not have changed the amount of labour needed. Planting might have taken a bit longer, and harvesting the beans would have come earlier than the maize harvest. Table 3 shows the distribution of labour week by week both in terms of pupil hours and as percentages, for three different situations:

- First, there is the real situation as recorded in the farm diaries and shown in table 1.

- Second, there is the situation where the labour has been planned properly using the minimum tillage approach as shown in table 2.
- Third, there is a situation which assumes that the farm is already fenced or does not need a fence. This last situation needs only 1186.5 pupil hours as compared to the 1988 hours actually worked on the farm.

Table 3: Labour Distribution for Three Different Situations