Proposals are invited for Labor Saving Strategies and Innovations for Women Smallholder Farmers program under Grand Challenges Explorations Round 11. This program is funded by Grand Challenge in Global health. The goal of this program is solicit innovative, holistic solutions to boost labor productivity of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa with a specific emphasis on increasing the productivity of women farmers’ labor.
Proposals must
demonstrate how an understanding of farmers’ needs and perspective informed the design of the solution,
include a basic plan that describes the manufacturing, delivery, upkeep and maintenance (if a physically engineered solution),
detail how usership and adoption will be measured over time.
Funding is offered to-
Development and in-country testing of low-cost hand implements or simple machines that increase labor productivity (this might include but is not limited to seeders, weeders, threshing and winnowing tools, and appropriate animal-powered machinery, all having innovative ergonomic or mechanical advantage);
Awareness campaigns targeting inefficiency of gender norms related to using draught power;
Novel practices or technologies that decrease labor expenditure for women in weeding row crops;
Innovative financing solutions to incentivize smallholder uptake of new labor saving innovations;
Equipment maintenance schemes;
Conservation agriculture projects that explicitly demonstrate immediate labor saving potential;
Other transformative labor-saving solutions not highlighted here.
Focus areas-
New or adapted labor-saving technologies that take into consideration cost, maintenance, upkeep and farmer needs in the design.
Improved practices that save labor in land preparation, seeding, weeding, pest control, tillage, harvest and post-harvest.
Business and/or distribution models that positively affect incentives for farmer adoption of labor saving devices.
Behavior change strategies that tackle socio-cultural and/or gender constraints to adoption of labor saving innovations.
Novel and low cost methods in marketing approaches for technologies that have demonstrated labor saving impact for women through piloting or beta testing.
Eligibility & Criteria-
Researchers and entrepreneurs – especially those working outside of agricultural development – to review what has not worked in the past in order to better understand the various constraints to farmer adoption of labor saving innovations and to generate ideas that will revolutionize current approaches to crop protection, management and harvesting are encouraged to apply.
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