6 Things That Everybody Likes All The Time That Farmers Don't Like Sometimes

Rainbows 🌈

Who doesn’t like a rainbow all the time? Its beautiful colours, the way they shine? Nursery rhymes are full of wonderful lyrics about rainbows. They make us colour them as kids as we cram all the colours in their spectrum. Pop songs about rainbows are immortal.

They even say there is a pot of gold below the rainbow.

Pride is also full of rainbows and that makes the celebrations even more colourful all over the world.

I know you are smiling right now. Rainbows tend to do that.

But I hate to break it to you. Farmers don’t always love them!

If your job is to grow food to feed yourself and to make a living, you wouldn’t want to see anything that signifies to you that it is not going to rain. Particularly when you need it the most.

Farmers want adequate rain for their crops especially during planting and fruiting. So at these points, rainbows however beautiful, are mostly unwanted!

Butterflies 🦋

They are also beautiful in all their colours. Their delicate wings flapping in the air are a sight to behold. Pictures of them will melt your heart. I particularly love the pink and purple ones.

But farmers don’t want them anywhere near their farms!

If you see some butterflies know that there are caterpillars around. And caterpillars are a nuisance to farmers. They eat the leaves and barks of crops which can be devastating to farms. They destroy crops leading to huge losses. Controlling them is hard particularly for large scale farmers who have to invest a lot in manual or chemical ways of eradicating them.

But when you start seeing butterflies in huge numbers, it means the species has completed its metamorphosis from eggs to fully grown butterflies and few caterpillars may still be present. But that’s after doing farms some serious damage!

Bunnies 🐇 🐰

Awww how cute! Right?

Yeah… not to farmers.

If a cute little thing has been burrowing your carrots, lettuce and cabbage farm, they are a total nuisance!

Bunnies will nibble on crunchy crops growing in farms leaving them unsuitable for market. I am pretty sure you wouldn’t buy a cabbage for your salad that has a browning burrow in it. Would you?

A lot of crop wastage is caused by bunnies.

However cute they are, farmers want little to do with them sometimes.

Monkeys 🙈

They are hilarious! They make you laugh, kids love them and their human like qualities are very fascinating. They peel a banana just like you would!

Just don’t tell farmers about monkeys, baboons and many in these species.

Their antics in farms are totally annoying. Imagine if the baboons in The Jungle Book bordered your farm. Complete annoyance! Also, Say good bye to your banana harvest. Count that season as a loss and look for alternative sources of food and an income.

The intelligence of the animals in these species makes its really hard to scare them away. They will study and out think farmer techniques meant to deter them away from farms. Scarecrows won’t do anything to them. Come on! They know that’s not you!

Squirrels

They are nice. I am mesmerized by their fluffy tales and quick speeds. Their love for nuts and how they nibble them.

But if you plant seeds and squirrels invade your farm digging them out and nibbling on them, you will want nothing to do with them!

They will bring you huge losses and you will have to repeat the whole back breaking, expensive and time consuming process of planting.

Worse still, the only way you will know the damage they caused, is after your seeds fail to sprout which is a week or more after the onset of rain or irrigation. Such a waste of water where every drop is precious!

Birds 🐦

I love how they chirp in the morning. Sparrows, crows… all of them. I love how they are always in pairs. They present the perfect image of love and companionship. I love their nest building skills too. It’s as if they studied art and design. I harbour bird watching tendencies.

Well, you can’t always be preaching birds to farmers.

Birds notice mature sorghum, millet and sunflower fields way before you do. By the time you go there, half of the plantation is gone!

Birds are a complete nuisance to rice farmers. When the crop is about to mature, you will find farmers physically keeping guard as birds have developed some form of intelligence that helps them go around the many strategies geared at deterring them away from the free, and yummy farm fresh food.

Chicken farmers loathe hawks like nothing else! They do not give peace to their little chicks and their watchful mothers.

Know you know. Thank you for attending my masterclass — Introduction to farming 101. 📖