Farming Acres of Land by Hand in Africa
Since around 1500 B.C., African women were processing grain using a hand milling method with a mortar and pestle to separate the indigestible hulls from the edible grain. To many people living in Africa, foods such as wild greens, yams, corn, millet, cassava, teff, rice, sorghum, and groundnuts are indispensable in the diet. Traditional crops such as yam, sorghum, millet, and teff are grown in Africa for centuries. Traditional simple hand tools for threshing, winnowing, and milling is commonly used throughout Africa has changed little in 3,515 years. Rural African diets are influenced by mainly subsistence farming specific to the geographical region.
In some regions, rice is the main crop while in others harvesting of wheat supplemented by fruits and vegetables comprises the bulk of daily food intake. Threshing is hitting the stems and husks of grain or cereal plants to separate the grains or seeds from the straw. Wind winnowing or screening is a method used for separating grain from the chaff. Pounding or milling grain requires great skill and stamina, the goal is not to produce very fine flour but rather to mill the grain to a point of coarseness that is acceptable to the cook.
Milling, pounding, and grinding is used interchangeably to describe the process of taking grain and decreasing it down to smaller sizes. Pounding grain is often a necessary communal activity and many hours are spent each day milling grain by hand. Pounding grain is therefore still a common sight and sound in many areas of Africa.
Mortar and pestle grinding methods are still in common use throughout Africa today. However, mills are very important machines for many urban communities in Africa as they eliminate much tedium and time-consuming labor. Bakhresa Grain Milling, a subsidiary of Tanzania-based Bakhresa Group, is the largest producer of wheat flour in East Africa. Bakhresa Grain Milling operates mills in Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Malawi, Mozambique and Burundi selling store-bought flour.
Many people still cannot afford to pay for store-bought flour or industrial grain milling and they grind by hand using traditional techniques such as a mortar and pestle. Conservative wisdom considers that Africa is not modern and Sub-Saharan African farmers use few modern inputs such as improved seeds, fertilizers, and other agro-chemicals, machinery, and irrigation. But what is modern farming? Modern farming according to the World Bank is the use of inorganic fertilizer, use of agrochemicals, irrigated and not solely relying on rain, use of improved seeds, tractor ownership, and use formal or informal credit to purchase modern equipment.
Small farmers produce much of the developing world's food but they are generally much poorer than the rest of the population in these countries and are less food secure. Furthermore, although rapid urbanization is taking place in many African countries, farming populations in 2030 will not be much smaller than they are today. For the near future, therefore, dealing with poverty and hunger in much of the world means confronting the problems that small farmers and their families face in their daily struggle for survival. As farming alone often cannot sustain rural families, the off-farm economy is an increasingly important source of household income.
Women, on average, comprise 43% of the agricultural labor force in developing countries and account for an estimated two-thirds of the world's 600 million poor livestock keepers. Women are the backbone of the rural economy, especially in the developing world. Yet they receive only a fraction of the land, credit, inputs such as improved seeds and fertilizers, agricultural training and information compared to men. Rural women in Africa typically work longer hours than men do, when one takes into account both paid productive and unpaid reproductive or domestic and care responsibilities. When these tasks are taken into account, women's total work hours are longer than men’s are.
Agricultural factor markets in Sub-Saharan Africa are widely believed to be failing or incomplete because of bad roads, unreliable electricity, and telecommunications services, insufficient credit and insurance, tenure systems that do not ensure secure property rights, corrupt officials, crowded ports, slow technological development, and labor supervision problems.
The widespread incidence of microbiological, chemical or other food safety hazards in food also continues to be a serious issue for the food system. Improving access to safe and nutritious food is fundamental to ensuring the prospects of future generations. Children who are properly nourished during the first 1,000 days of their lives are 33% more likely to escape poverty as adults.
