Machinery ease burden on subsistence farmers

Ndalimpinga Iita - Subsistence farmers in the northern part of Namibia are shunning traditional labour-intensive threshing and winnowing methods as they adopt new technology to process their bumper harvests.

Alina Fillip, a communal farmer at a far-flung village in Namibia's Oshana region, said that she opted to hire threshing and winnow machine to extract grains from the dry harvested earheads and conclude the farming season.

Before that, she had to thresh a heap of the dry earheads of pearl millet (mahangu) by hand with a stick. With her family, she would spend more than three days to complete the process.

"This year, I learned that some young people are helping to thresh with a machine. Since I had a bumper harvest, the thresher came in handy," said Fillip on Friday.

Entrepreneur

The improved yield follows good rainfall received over the farming season. The North received regular to above-normal rainfall between December 2019 and early 2020, according to Leonard Hango, a hydrologist with the agriculture ministry.

Meanwhile, modern thresher machine, introduced to farmers by agricultural entrepreneur, Hambeleleni Eelu has since eased the burden of rural dwellers.

"It is much better," added Fillip.

According to Eelu, she was inspired by the need to help the elderly see through the farming season.

"Over the past years, farmers endured major losses due to drought. But this farming season, farmers recorded improved yields, and thus most farmers decided to hire threshing machines," said Eelu.

The threshing machine also addresses the shortage of human resources in the village as more young people migrate to urban areas leaving older people in rural areas.

"Most people in villages are old and would no longer be able to thresh by hand," said Eelu.

Investment

Eelu is not the only one capitalizing on the season via modern agricultural machinery. Andreas Johannes also invested in a thresher.

"Apart from helping farmers ease the processes, I was drawn to the monetary proceeds I would generate from this venture," he said.

According to him, in a month, he helps more than 25 farmers complete their harvest and earns an average of N$8 500.

"We have also since created seasonal jobs to people in the rural area who help us to thresh with the machine," he added.

In the interim, more rural dwellers are turning to the innovative method of threshing at the demise of traditional practices. Another farmer, Elise Iiyambo, said she would not have been able to afford to thresh using traditional methods.

Threshing and winnowing using the machine are also faster and cheaper, according to the farmer.

"If not for the modern thresher, I would have had to hire people to help with the threshing and winnowing, which would have cost me much more money. I only paid N$300, compared to the amount of more than N$800 spent in the past," Iiyambo said. – Nampa/Xinhua