Dietary Energy Balance: Calories Available Vs. Calories Exerted (A 50% Deficit).

One concern facing rural development for poverty alleviation in developing countries is the high reliance on manual labor, and the tendency for development projects to promote labor intensive innovations. Overlooked in this effort is the question of dietary energy balance comparing the amount of kcal smallholder farmers typically have access to, relative to what they would need to undertake a full day of agronomic field work. When carefully reviewed it is not a pretty picture. Typically smallholder farmers will have diet of approximately 2000 kcal, which is just enough to meet basic metabolism needs. If they are to work diligently all day they need a diet in excess of 4000 kcal. To obtain the 4000 kcal they need to consume the uncooked equivalent of 1.1 kg of maize, or 1.1 kg rice, or 1.1 kg wheat flour or pasta, or 2.5 kg cassava, or 4.6 kg sweet potatoes, or 3.3 kg of plantains. The result of having a diet of only 2000 to 3000 kcal/day is the diligent work day is reduced to only 3 or 4 hours, which will extend crop establishment to over eight weeks, rendering most agronomic production recommendations null and void. The implications are for development projects to concentrate on drudgery relief innovations instead of labor intensive innovations. This quickly implies facilitating access to mechanization mostly through contract tillage, threshing, etc.