Nut sheller feeds the hungry

. Designed and developed by the US Full Belly Project, this simple idea, made in cast concrete, is proving to be a boon to villagers in remote areas in a number of developing countries. Jock Brandis and volunteers in Wilmington, North Carolina in the USA are now working to develop a sheller that weighs less than the Universal Nut Sheller. They expect to start field testing the new mid sized shellers in Malawi within the next few weeks. The original Universal Nut Shellers are being used in Rupinuni in Guyana to shell peanuts for a school lunch programme that supplies peanut butter to students. According to that country’s minister of education, this has resulted in school test scores being improved by 30%. Furthermore, rsearchers from the USAID Peanut Collaborative Research Support Program have requested training to build peddle powered shellers to help Amerindians get 100,000kg of peanuts to the Caribbean market. To assist with this, they will use a Portable Peanut Thresher that removes peanuts from stalks, a task that is currently performed by hand. As well as reducing labour, the machine is said to make users 10% more efficient. We are sure that there must be similarly ingenious ideas that have been developed in the UK and elsewhere that are perhaps less well known. If you have any such, especially if it has been prototyped and field tested, please let us know: Email Dr Tom Shelley For more information on the US project, see: www.fullbellyproject.org