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The Magic of Machines

Our modern world is built on machines. In developed economies, machines have allowed us to build lives of abundance, variety and choice never before seen in human civilization. 

In agriculture, machines have moved beyond the simple moldboard plow used in pre-industrial times to machines that can plant, weed, and harvest crops in a tenth of the time it would take a human to do the same thing, and in many cases, remote controlled no less! 


 



Keso and Mulal Diallo harvest corn in Guinea at a rate of 1 bushel per hour

A combine in Illinois harvests corn at a rate of 7200 bushels per hour.

Machines offer three main advantages over human labor: 

Farmers in Guinea possess few tools in order to cultivate crops, and those that do they have are unsophisticated.










In addition, there is little, if any, research and development into improved farming tools that will enable farmers to adopt improved and more ecologically sustainable farming techniques. 

Ibrahim Diallo and his family plant peanuts by hand using an oxen team and a pre-industrial single blade moldboard plow.

It would be accurate to say that Guinean farmers practice Bronze Age farming, with Bronze Age results.

Better tools are no-brainer!
 
The first machines we plan to introduce (and help to refine or modify when necessary) are:

Tool

Benefit

Haraka punch planter

This allows the farmer to quickly plant his crops directly into the field without an oxen team.

Manual cultivator

This allows the farmer to remove small weeds from his/her fields more effectively, thus allowing the crop to produce more.

Rotary grass cutter

This allows the farmer to mow mature weeds between rows, and allow the weed debris to become green manure and fertilize the soil.