Nuts and Bolts

On a trip to Mali, Jock Brandis was asked by women he met in rural villages to send them a simple, cost-effective nut-sheller to aid their ground-nut business. It turned out that the “holy grail of sustainable agriculture” didn’t exist, so he built one. The Universal Nut Sheller costs $28 to make and has raised village incomes by an estimated 20 percent. Brandis’ organization, the Full Belly Project, has placed machines in 17 countries, created similar machines for other nuts, and trains folks to locally manufacture and distribute them.