Our innovation is the development of Aybar BBM. Aybar is the name of the company while BBM stands for Broad Bed and furrow Maker. Broad Bed and Furrows (BBF) are constructed at planting in order to drain excess water in vertisols. Vertisols are fine textured soils that exhibit poor drainage. Poor drainage results in water-logging which suffocates the crop leading to reduced crop yields or even complete crop failure. In the Ethiopian highlands alone, there are about 7.6Million hectares of vertisols out of which farmers use only 25% for crop production mainly because of water-logging problems. In other countries, such as in India, farmers use bullock drawn BBM to drain excess water from vertisols. However, those prototypes were found to be too heavy for the local breeds of oxen.
