Retirement: Finding a New Avocation As a Volunteer Agronomist-Engineer with an NGO.

Upon retiring after 45 years at the University of Minnesota in 2012, I started volunteering 25 to 30 hours per week for Compatible Technology International (CTI), an NGO with 35 years of innovation of post-harvest tools for small land holders in developing countries. The existing volunteers are primarily engineers with limited crop/soils expertise. Initially the task was to develop groundnut (peanut) lifting, stripping and shelling equipment, a new area of endeavor for CTI. My knowledge of crops and agricultural harvesting equipment allowed me to design and my non-ag background colleague engineers assisted in assembly of prototypes. Prototypes were tested in the CTI shop in St. Paul, MN and on plot land at the University of Minnesota before taking to Tanzania and Malawi to test in the villages. I have made 5 trips to Africa with the machines during harvesting/shelling seasons. In Malawi the use of the CTI tools reduced the time to harvest 1 acre of groundnuts from 601 hours of hand labor to 72 hours with the machines. The lifter is designed to be pulled by two draft animals. The other devises are hand powered. Design criteria include ergonomic consideration, power of women users, product quality and impact on yield. Socio-economic surveys were done before the design phase and after field testing. The lifter, stripper and sheller have been approved by the Malawian Agricultural Technical Clearing Committee for manufacture and sale in Malawi. ASA-CSSA-SSSA continues to be my professional home although the papers and articles I seek out are very different than those I reviewed as a University faculty member.