GRAIN BIKES

by Emily Vogler, Rhode Island School of Design

Tools to help diversify local agricultural production

Tools shape the way we shape the land — for example, as the size of tractors has increased over the past century, so has large scale transformation of agricultural landscapes. Large farms now dominate crop production in the United States; technology has been a major driver of these landscape changes as large tractors reduce labour by allowing a single operator to manage more acres.

Unlike vegetable production where each vegetable must be harvested individually, grain can be treated as a bulk product, which lends itself to mechanisation. The invention of the combine at the end of the nineteenth century revolutionised grain production. Before this, farmers reaped (cut the grain), threshed (separated the grain from the stalk) and winnowed (separated the grain from the chaff) separately. The combine does all three harvesting operations in one simplified process, saving time and labour. Current grain production in the United States, dominated by large scale industrial farms in the north, central and south plains, is entirely dependent on large combines that can harvest up to 150 acres per day, weigh over thirty thousand pounds, and can cost a half million dollars. . . .

Read the rest of Emily's piece on simple, easily constructed bike-powered threshers, winnowers, and seed separators both in On Site review 39: tools, and at https://projects.sare.org/sare_project/one16-277/