Crop Production
Goals
To allow all farmers, primarily small-scale farmers, access to the unused labor hours of the unemployed individuals willing to work as farm workers and perform various farming tasks to help expand the surface area of cultivated agricultural land, reduce food insecurity and increase personal and financial security.
Overview
- This Mutual Aid Group consists of skilled and unskilled farmworkers who will work on all kinds of agricultural farms of producers who submitted a request. They join Farmers Field Schools when these are available in their communal section. They use their tools, and their transportation means. Furthermore, they can be assigned to work with any organization operating in the Communal Section (e.g., agricultural extension agents, field coordinators, the National Equipment Center, non-governmental, private and public organizations, regional, departmental and communal offices, etc.). They receive a monthly participation incentive and weekly training. A Mutual Aid Group Facilitator supervises them. The Mutual Aid Group Facilitators are trained to conduct groups and keep records. They are not subject-matter experts. A Communal Section may have more than one Mutual Aid Group with a focus on farming.
- For every 20 hours of work received from a Mutual Aid Group, the farmer, in return, gives five plants to Reciprocitas to help the Mutual Aid Group that works on tree planting. These farmers also join Farmers Field Schools when these are available in the communal section.
- As the farmworkers travel from farm to farm helping with agricultural work, they also teach and encourage farmers to prepare a 72 hours emergency storage kit at home gradually. These emergency kits comprise food and other items necessary for them and their families to survive a natural disaster. In addition, they teach and encourage farm owners to be prepared similarly to help their livestock also survive in case of a natural disaster.
Job description
- Farmworkers plant, cultivate and harvest vegetables, fruits, nuts, and field crops.
- They use hand tools, such as shovels, trowels, hoes, tampers, pruning hooks, shears, and knives.
- They use any machinery and power tools available on a farm to help with farming.
- They dig, clean, repair, and maintain irrigation canals and dams.
- Their duties include tilling the soil and applying fertilizers; transplanting, weeding, thinning, or pruning crops; using pesticides; cleaning, packing, and loading harvested products.
- They may construct trellises, repair fences and farm buildings, storage silos, or participate in irrigation activities.
- They feed and tend livestock and poultry.
- They perform or assist in conducting breeding activities of farm animals.
- Mutual Aid Group members also work on each other's farms.