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Re-Designing Africa's Ox-Powered Farm Tools

4 Contributors | KUdesign | Recent Author: KUdesign

Hello, we are students in the 2009/10 Industrial Design class at The University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas USA. We are interested in applying socially directed design to make meaningful contributions to solving everyday problems faced by the majority of people in our world today. We are offering our collaboration as design students to contribute to this IDEA and assist in advancing its presentation or implementation in some way. Inspired by the problem statement posted we have ideas and questions we hope can be clarified by collaborative input from those of you who are experts in your field or have lived or observed the condition the IDEA intends to resolve. Here are some of the initial questions we would like some help with:

What specific farm tools need to be re-designed?
Why do those tools need to be re-designed?
Should tool re-designs be focused more toward donkeys or oxen?
What materials would be used and would they be readily available in the local communities?

Comments

roosenberg said 5 months ago

Your offer is great! Tillers International would appreciate your participation in our re-design projects. Please feel free to contact us directly through our website. An online discuss could also be helpful right here at the ARC site.

1) As to your first question, the projects that we undertake will be dependant on funding. At the moment, we are working on weeder/cultivator designs for Mozambique. We have some upgrading to do on a manual hay baler for Tanzania. We are continuing to improve some of the fodder choppers for Uganda and Mozambique. While we like to focus on designs for a particular environment and economy, many designs can be transfered through a region.

2) The general reasons for redesign is cost. Next, is the need to scale down tools to the power potential of smaller animals than US draft animals. For example, most draft animals in Africa weigh about 300 to 400 kg. Our US-bred Milking Shorthorns weigh in at about 1,100 kg. All day available power is from 10 to 12 percent of weight. Another frequent reason for re-design is manufacturing processes. Many old draft animal tools are built with cast iron parts. Now, weld fabrication is much more practical and occasionally even molded plastics may have potential. Figuring out these reasons is the exciting challenge of designing for the poor farmer.
3) Despite some of the comments on the ARC site, we find little need to differentiate. The difference in hitching does not limit the tools and the African donkey is not much smaller than the African ox.
4) Materials are always a cost challenge and sometimes a cultural challenge. We find wood beams adequate in strength for draft animal plows, yet people really want steel. The most readily available steel in re-inforcement bar for concrete. But several flat and round bar sizes are available in most cities of 100,000 or more populations. Most of these are mild steel. Special order steel like higher carbon or alloys are much more expensive. Frequently we re-forge leaf spring stock. Complete use of "found" materials would be great but it limits the ability to take design production up to scale.
I hope this starts your thought process. Essentially, your questions have to be asked of each innovation sought. It would be great if you could visit our site in Michigan for one of our design sessions. We call them "Threshing Floors" for all the ideas that get winnowed out in the process.
Thanks and keep in touch!

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Summary

Buying tractors or the fuel required to power them is far beyond the reach of most African small farmers. At the same time, they are tired from the energy draining attempt to raise their families beyond subsistence farming to surplus production with the hand hoe. Many have oxen or donkeys that can power a quadrupling of production with improved implements, inputs, and practices. In the 1960s, Africa missed out on the benefits of the Green Revolution, in part because it did not have the draft animal infrastructure that existed in Asia and Latin America. Later, the tsetse-fly-carried sleeping sickness of cattle was removed as an obstacle, but the designs of small-scale farm implements available in Africa have not changed significantly in the 40 years that have elapsed. Picking up on the "Designing for the World's Poorest" projects at MIT and other institutions, it seems that we can focus outstanding skills on the challenges to Africa's small farmers. An international network of farmers, agricultural historians, Amish, metal fabricators and machinists could work together digitally and personally to meld historic and contemporary implement design elements in response to challenges from Africa's farm communities for appropriately-scaled, low-capital farm tools for draft animals. The productive potential of these re-invented tools could be diffused through local manufacturers and farmer field schools.