Its Peanut Season Again

Its still a little hard to believe, but its cold season here, and peanut harvesting time again. In an effort to have something to do and get out of my house, I have been going to some of the women's fields to harvest. Its a long, tiring process; although its mostly women's job to farm peanuts, men help in planting and weeding, and then pulling up the plants. After the men pull up the peanut plants, the women collect the plants into a large pile to dry in the sun. Once all the plants are pulled up, each woman asks her friends to come help pull the peanuts off the plant, to be dried in the sun some more before being take home or bagged up to be sold. Its a long, back-breaking process, but doing the work with your friends and neighbors alleviates the tediousness a little bit. The sale of peanuts is one of the main sources of income here, especially for women. Unfortunately, although I'm no expert on agricultural economics, I think the women get the short end of the deal. Women here sell their 50kg (110lbs) for about 5,000CFA, or about $11USD. There are so many middlemen, and so many difficulties into getting the peanuts to the capital or another major town, that the women have no other choice but to sell for what they can, and the end consumer gets the high price. After seeing the farming process from the beginning, I doubt I will ever eat peanuts again, without thinking of all my Malian friends working so hard under the African sun.