How farming is being done and the different kinds of tools used for farming in your community
Image designed by me using canva
INTRODUCTION
HOW FARMING IS DONE IN MY COMMUNITY
Farming is a process which involves the growing of crops or raising livestock.
Now that we have explained what farming is, let’s get to know what a farm is. Farm is a special area of land is purposely used for the growing of crops and production food.
You might be wondering why I didn’t mention livestock in my definition of farm, don’t get confused. Livestocks reared in the farm are primarily reared for food that is why I mentioned food in the definition.
My community is a city in Ghana which is found in West Africa. Basically most of the people found in my community are farmers and we all depends on farm products to live. I should say about 90% of my community member are involved in farming since it is mainly our means of livelihood.
THE TYPES OF FARMS IN MY COMMUNITY
There two main farming system in my community are the animal farming system and the crop farming system. With the animal farming system, I will be talking about I will be talking about the herbivores animals ,(example cattle and goats) and Omnivores animals (poultry) using one example to demonstrate.
Most farms are either own by an individual, family or corporation. Most farm in my community are grown by the monoculture system or with different variety of crops and either separated from the livestocks or together with them.
This is a type of farm mainly formed for raising fowls such as chickens, ducks, turkeys etc for meats and their eggs. Less than 10% of my community member are involved in this farming system.
In this types, fowls are kept as livestocks in a coop to be kept safe and secured which is made up of boxes and perches surrounded by a cage. The fowls are sometimes allowed to move out of the coop and move about freely within the cage but are later confined back into the coop before night falls for some reasons.
The fowls are fed inside their coops and also treated well so as to provide a lot of eggs and food for the farms. The animals are always prone to disease which easy erase them in no time if not identify early but is what is making this type of farm system a challenge in my community.
Cattle farming involves a activity called animal husbandry where animals are kept for meat, milk, fiber etc. Over 40% people are involved in the type of farming in my community.
Since most of the animals are reared as food in my community, they need to be fed at least twice a day. So due to this the animal mostly reared at the outskirts of the community in a cage made of woods to be able to control them. Being reared at the outskirts, they are been taken out of their cage go and feed on the grass in the morning till afternoon brought back and taken away again at night.
There is the fear of not allowing the animals to not feed during the evening because at such times, insects might have settled on the weed which when eaten by an animal can cause harm to it.
The dumps from the animals in this types of farm are used for manure in agricultural farming.
Image source
Is a type of farming where plants are grown and later been harvested or it’s product been harvested. Crop farming is what is mostly done in my community. I will be talking much on that.
Crop farming in my community is mostly done in the rainy seasons with a few farming during the dry season. The rainy seasons starts in the months of mostly March and mostly ends in November and the dry season start from November to February, thus an average of six (6) each.
So before any farmers starts to farms, he first identifies the type of crop to grow, the nutrients the crops will be needing and the nutrients already present in the soil.
After this factors are considered, the farmer picks a piece of land where he will grow his crops. He clears the piece of land and loose the soil with the help of a traitor or animals tied to a plough.
Afterward seeds or plant seedlings are planted on the land. When the crops starts growing, the farmers usually relies on the rains or water the crops depending on the season of farming since other farm in the raining seasons and other practice irrigational farming.
Fertilizer is been applied to produce high yields and weedicide applied to kill crop pests and weeds.
Once the crops are mature, the farmer will harvest them and depending on the type of crop been farmed different tools are used to harvest them.
TOOLS AND USES
| Tools | Uses |
|---|---|
| Cutlass | Most used for the clearing of land |
| Sickle | Use for harvesting rice |
| Hoe | Use to shape the soil, grow weeds and harvest root crops. |
| Pickaxe | Use to break soil that a hoe can not. |
| Shovel and spade | use for gardening and also carry animal dump |
| Traitor | For ploughing and loosening the soil to aid aeration |
Above are the very few I can mention which are commonly used.
CONCLUSION
Farming in my community main the Subsistence farmingtype. In this form of farming, the crops or livestock raised are used by the farmer and the farmer’s family, leaving only little for sale. Almost 80% of my community members practices subsistence farming. Most of them moved from one site to another as they exhausted the soil at each location. Also dump from the animals are used as manure for crop growing.
I would like to say a big thank you to @thegreens and @steem-cameroon for organizing this wonderful contest where we can all share our ideas.
Steem Cameroon is a wonderful community which I will urge everyone to join since they about the environment and more and also provide us with the opportunity to share our ideas.
Wow in-fact you’ve nailed it. Great job
Thank you @mukadas
great writeup
Thank you ☺️ @echamroland
Wow great writing. You have numerous tools used in your area
Thanks. In fact there are more tools. These are just the commonly used ones.
Wow okay
Your write up is very educative. Your community is really doing well in farming ooh.
Thank you very much ☺️
U a welcomed
This is beautiful but while reading through your livestock farming, I felt like most people do confine and large-scale livestock farming.
Do people rear chickens in the open range? Like here in Cameroon, people just keep their local breed chickens to wander around until the day they need it for food.
What kinds of crops are mostly grown by the farmers?
@thegreens That is very true. The local breed chickens are mostly allowed to wander around and feed on their own and that is mostly done in our local homes. While some are confined in a coop to always prevent them from disease like bird flu. Only a few practice that.
Crops grown by the farmers are mostly cereals such as rice, maize wheat,millet and sorghum and pulses like beans and cowpea. We have others that are involved in farming yam, potatoes, cassava etc. The yam and cassava is done mostly t in large scale.
Thank you.