After helping the students in my school dig 45 1 meter by 3 meter garden beds (unquestionably child labor) I began to dream of having a rototiller here and I think it is a realistic idea. There are four types of farming that happen around my town (in order of least to most successful):
- Large scale acreage
- Womens cooperative gardens
- Small plots in the courtyards of houses
- Farming by the river
All of these are done by hand, which means at most the top 4 inches of soil gets aerated and turned. This soil is almost completely devoid of organic material. Also a lot of farming does not happen because it is too much work to bring more plots under cultivation. IF I had a rototiller, I could rent it out to cultivate new plots and to mix in organic material. Currently the most fertilization they do is throwing some manure on top of the soil, where the sun breaks down a lot of the nutrients. The really cool thing about this idea is that it is concievably a sustainable idea. Here is how the economics break down:
- Cost of a decent rototiller: 700 USD
- Cost of shipping: 200 USD
- Cost of gas: not that expensive per use
If you convert that all to Ouguiya you get a maximum of 300,000 UM. Divide that price by 600 hours of use and you get a price of 500 UM per hour. That is, if I charged 500 per hour I would completely pay for the rototiller in 600 hours. Now, 500 UM is too much for tilling a garden plot that might only yeild 1,000 UM of produce. However, 100 UM is not too much and even though that would change the break even point to 3,000 hours it is still concievable that it could break even, or in other words, be sustainable. There is no need for this to be completely sustainable and it makes sense to find financing for it, but the fact that it COULD be makes it seem like a pretty viable project. What do you think? Also, anyone know anyone in West Africa that has a rototiller I could talk to? Haha.
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4 comments:
There are people who wnat to work on this. How abot we all send our names to you and you get us a list, so we can work together.
You may want to rethink that re:the effect a rototiller would have on a fragile soil system
What about the Amish method using renewable resources to pull, rather than gas.
Good thoughts both of you. I am not worried about reducing the quality of the soil, the soil here is literally just clay and sand and the only organisms to speak of are ants and termites due to the heat. Therefore, there is not much I could possibly do to the soil by deeply cultivating it. That is, even if it all blows away, what will be left would be exactly the same materials as were there in the first place.
I have thought of using animal cultivation but the problem is that most of the farming done around town is small garden plots not big fields, so using a horse or a donkey is not really practical. However that said, for the big fields I do want to push for animal cultivation. Trouble is, I know how to use a rototiller, but I do not know how to use a horse. Perhaps as a development project we could get some of the Bylers to come over here ;)
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