A case study done in Uganda found that weeding absorbed over 50% of smallholder farmers’ production costs.
It also occurs at times when the demand for labour is quite high and needed for many farm activities.
Crop protection products such as herbicides and the adoption of best practices can help reduce this burden.
In the Ugandan case study, farmers found that adopting conservation agriculture practices greatly reduced the labour they needed for weeding, sometimes by as much as 50 days worth of labour. Thus, instead of requiring 73 days under their usual pattern, they only needed 22 days when using herbicide, or even as few as 5 days when practicing no-till.
Lifelong Learning for Farmers (L3), an initiative by the Commonwealth of Learning, an NGO, operates in South India and Sri Lanka in partnership with local banks, ICT providers and farmers groups.