Ethiopia-based farm implement manufacturer Aybar Engineering exhibited its Broad Bed Maker (BBM) farm implement at this year’s Maker Faire Rome exhibition, which took place from October 12 to 14 in Rome, Italy. The company was established in 2014 to develop improved agricultural implements for smallholder farmers.

The Aybar BBM is a land management system that assists farmers to construct broad bed furrows to drain excess water in vertisols, which is a fine textured, clay-rich soil that exhibits poor drainage. Poor drainage results in water-logging, ultimately suffocating crops and leading to reduced crop yields or even complete crop failure.

In the Ethiopian Highlands alone, there are about 7.6-million hectares of vertisols of which farmers use only 25% for crop production mainly because of water-logging problems. The use of the Aybar BBM increases crop yields by up to 300% and makes new land available for farming. It enables farmers to plant two crops per season and, if the drained excess water is stored in ponds, can even make a third crop possible.

While the Aybar BBM is reasonably priced at $16.48 (around R237) and can offer returns of up to $800/ha a year (around R11 490/ha), the company faces the challenge of creating awareness among smallholder farmers who live in rural areas as they have limited access to information.

The Aybar BBM is a multipurpose implement and can also be used to construct tied ridges by detaching the bed maker. Tied ridges are a series of basins created in the field to delay runoff, thereby reducing flooding and increasing infiltration for when dry spells occur in water stressed areas. The implement can also be used to make effective furrows for small scale irrigation.

In other countries, such as India, the BBM prototypes used to drain excess water from vertisols were found to be too heavy for the local breeds of oxen. This, in turn, led to research to find an appropriate BBM prototype for local farmers. The initial prototypes were rejected mainly owing to their high draft power requirements and their inability to construct the desired broad bed and furrows. The Aybar BBM was subsequently developed following a different approach, which has addressed all the concerns of local farmers.

The innovation helps smallholder farmers in Ethiopia as well as in other African countries to increase their crop yields and hence their income while reducing soil erosion.