By Zied Idoudi
ICARDA and its national partners in Tunisia are promoting entrepreneurship and rural businesses through providing farmer association with seed cleaning and treatment machines and mobile feed grinders, locally manufactured at a low-cost. The machines and grinders offer an innovative way to increase feed production and seed quality to enhance forage production across the country. Funded by the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock, the machines have been distributed to four farmer associations in Central and North-West Tunisia supporting over 1,000 small, mixed farmers.
Traditional and manual seed cleaning by woman farmer.
(Photo: Zied Idoudi, ICARDA)
Due to the lack of quality forage seeds in the market and in order to avoid purchasing expensive quality seeds, small landholders in Tunisia traditionally rely on their own seeds to produce forage for their livestock. However, seeds cleaned manually usually means broken or small seeds in the product reducing its quality and subsequently resulting in low forage yields and income.