Full Belly Project

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Rachel and the Malian peanut sheller Uganda, 2005

The Full Belly Project Ltd is a non-profit organization based out of Wilmington, North Carolina, which designs labor-saving devices to improve the lives of people in developing countries. At present one of their primary objectives is to increase the cost effectiveness of peanut agriculture as a means of sustainable development in those countries, through the development of affordable appropriate technology which they place in the public domain. There are an estimated half billion people across the globe in over 100 countries, primarily in the equatorial regions and particularly in Africa, dependent upon peanuts as a primary source of protein. Along with this there are a considerable number of side benefits to peanut production:

Soil conservation (as legumes, peanuts nitrify soil, while their complex root system prevents erosion);
Animal feedstock (peanut hay, the upper portion of the peanut plant, can be fed to livestock);
Fuel briquettes (compressed peanut hulls) ;
Foodstuffs (shelled peanuts, peanut flour, peanut butter); and
Increase in cash crops (peanuts themselves can be sold, but nitrification increases growth of other crops like maize and cotton).

1 The Malian peanut sheller
2 Distributing technology
3 Impact on women
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] The Malian peanut sheller

The major limiting factor for growing peanuts has always been the time- and labor-intensive process of hand-shelling peanuts, a job usually relegated to women and children. Overcoming this technical obstacle has been a goal of agricultural research for some years. When Dr. T. Williams, Senior Research Scientist at University of Georgia and an expert on all 15,000 cultivars of peanuts, was first approached by Jock Brandis, the project's engineer, he stated that an affordable peanut sheller is considered the "holy grail of sustainable development". The final design for the machine was completed in January 2005, and has come to be known as the Malian peanut sheller. This relatively small, hand-powered device made from two pieces of concrete and a handful of metal pieces is able to shell at a rate of 50 kg of peanuts an hour. On average an individual woman or child can manually shell 1.5 kg of peanuts in a single hour. Furthermore, one set of fiberglass moulds at a cost of $500 can reproduce an indefinite number of machines. Raw materials for the machine include only half a sack of concrete and a few metal parts, which cost less than $50 US per machine. Maintenance is nearly zero, and a machine's lifespan is estimated at twenty years.

[edit] Distributing technology

Presently the organization is collaborating with like-minded development organizations in an effort to target areas most in need of this sustainable technology. Since finishing the final design of the Malian peanut sheller in January 2005, they have distributed machines in Uganda, Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Zambia and the Philippines. Studies in the field have shown that one machine is capable of processing enough peanuts to feed 1000 people. With a few manual adjustments the machine is also capable of shelling winged beans, neem nuts (from neem trees, Azadirachta indica, also known as margosa), and a variety of other nuts found throughout the world. Research is also going into creating another hand-powered machine for making fresh soymilk from soybeans. The Full Belly Project is also an example of Open Design.

[edit] Impact on women

This technology is particularly empowering for women in that it relieves them of the burden of hand-shelling peanuts. Women provide the majority of agricultural labor, and with the time saved by this machine, would have the opportunity to dedicate themselves to other obligations. Collection of firewood, a chore often left to children, can be greatly reduced by the simple processing of shelled peanut hulls into fuel briquettes.