Bird Scaring Technologies in Rice Production: The need for Policies Prohibiting Participation of Women and Children

Augustine Odinakachukwu Ejiogu  and  Victor B.N. Okoli

Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development, Imo State University, Owerri.

Corresponding author Email: odiiejiogu@yahoo.com

Accepted 06 June, 2012

Abstract

A disruptive technology improves a product or service in ways that the market does not expect typically by being lower priced or designed for a different set of consumers. There are arrested technologies which reduce human drudgery but have not taken root and are therefore marginalized on account of the neglected sector which they serve.  In Nigeria, bird scaring in the agricultural sector, is to date effected manually; in the aviation sector, it is never done manually. Nigeria’s total consumption stands at 4.4 million tons of milled rice, but produces only about 2.8 million tons. The deficit is augmented through rice importation. Of all the problems of rice production, that of birds scaring tends to be the least discussed in literature and by extension a neglected area. This neglect has in effect arrested bird scaring technologies that upgrade the traditional tedious and laborious use of women and children in bird scaring. For 3-5 weeks during the milk stage of rice in the field, women and children spend the hours of 7am-6pm on end daily scaring birds. For the women, the activity is an additional burden to their domestic chores. For the children, their attendance to school is adversely affected. This paper presents some alternative bird scaring operations in rice farming. It also proposes some policy measures aimed at releasing these technologies for mass adoption and thereby effectively relieving women and children from manually scaring birds in rice fields.

Keywords: Bird scaring Technologies, Rice Production, Policies Prohibition.