The Full Belly Project: A Simple Solution for World Hunger

Imagine coming up with a simple mechanical invention, a device made of rudimentary materials that are widely available, but with the potential to save millions of people from malnutrition and poverty. It's been done by an inventor from North Carolina and it's working because of a group called The Full Belly Project.

To an American, a peanut shelling machine might sound like an infomercial gadget, something to use while snacking in front of the TV. But in the underdeveloped countries of Africa and Asia, separating peanuts from their shells represents a major part of the hard work necessary to live.

Every day, five hundred million people around the world rely on peanuts as their major source of protein. Removing the shells, which toughen while drying in the sun, is done mainly by women and children. Spending hours at a time on this incredibly labor-intensive work results in sore, painful fingers.

Commercial peanut processors use large machines, of course, but they are obviously not feasible for people in small villages. These machines typically waste 20% to 40% of the peanuts in the process.

The problem came to the attention of the right person in 2002, when Jock Brandis visited a Peace Corps friend in the Republic of Mali, West Africa. Brandis had a career as a motion picture sound and light engineer, so he was well equipped with technical and mechanical savvy. He learned that villagers were reluctant to grow more peanuts because they had no viable mechanical means to shell them and were turning to cotton as a cash crop. Unfortunately, growing cotton depletes the soil. Peanuts, however, like all plants in the legume family, have the unique ability to take nitrogen from the air and "fix" it into the soil as they grow, actually enriching the soil.

Peanuts, or as Africans call them, ground nuts or simply "G-nuts", provide a highly nutritious food, and can be made into flour, peanut butter and oil. Growing and using them more easily would mean not only better nutrition, but an opportunity for economic development by selling the surplus.

Jock Brandis researched the problem with the help of the Carter Center and the University of Georgia peanut research center. He found that there had been many failed attempts to design a practical device able to handle this chore. It was such an elusive goal that it became known as "the Holy Grail of sustainable agriculture."

Within about a year, he perfected his Universal Nut Sheller or UNS. It met the requirements: it's easily replicated locally, durable, easy to operate, needs no electricity or batteries, and is made from sand, cement, metal bars and other common metal parts. In appearance, it is a concrete cone, with a simple, crank powered rotor inside. The concrete cone is cast in a long-lasting fiberglass mold.

The UNS shells about 110 pounds of nuts per hour, compared to the human labor rate of 2 pounds, even handles various sizes of nuts, and boasts a breakage rate of only 3% to 6%. It's useful with several other nuts like pine nuts, shea nuts and pecans.

Brandis took a Discovery Channel film crew back to Mali with him to introduce the UPS. The local people are thrilled with the invention.

In his home base of Wilmington, NC, volunteers from the Rotary Club and Coastal Carolina Returned Peace Corps Volunteers all pitched in to help produce and distribute the machine. Some are assembled in Wilmington and shipped overseas, but the light weight of the fiberglass molds allows for shipping the materials as kits to be assembled by the people using the UNS. Without shipping costs, one set of molds and parts for five machines costs $700.

The Full Belly Project evolved as a non-profit international development organization to promote the sheller and subsequent inventions as Open Source Appropriate Technology (OSAT). Refinements and replication are welcomed by the group, which just asks that developers credit them and provide feedback.

In 2005 Brandis partnered with MIT's D-Lab, a project where new technology is developed and introduced, and his sheller was chosen to be introduced by an MIT team to the Philippines, Ghana and Zambia. When he further refined the sheller to be pedal powered, it won third place in the MIT Good Ideas Competition in May 2006. In 2006 Brandis also received the Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award and the machine was featured in an article in the magazines November issue.

Today the shellers are making life better in more and more locations. The Full Belly Project Executive Director Jeff Rose explained that third party collaboration from other groups has helped to introduce the machine to about 15 countries.

Full Belly Project's biggest success to date is in the Philippines. There, one of the world's largest cement manufacturers not only helped teach local craftsmen how to build the sheller, but is now buying the discarded shells as an alternative fuel source for its factories. Now Full Belly Project is working to replicate this partnership with cement manufacturers in Uganda.

Even the old cliché about "a tough nut to crack" has been tackled by the Full Belly Project. The Full Belly Project has developed a new shelling machine to crack macadamia. Jeff Rose said, "Macadamia nuts are the hardest nuts in the world to crack, our new macadamia nut sheller can crack about one hundred pounds an hour." Macadamias are worth about ten times more when sold already shelled, so this means tremendous economic opportunity potential for impoverished individuals. The idea is being rolled out in Guatemala.

To learn more about the Full Belly Project and about how you can make an impact, go to the group's website. You can link from there to two informative videos detailing more of the story.