I think this is targeting a different part of the "supply chain". Not the people that will directly use it (African farmer) but rather the people that will donate it to the endusers (NGOs).

So this is basically enterprise sales. "Turnkey solution". Sure it could be assembled cheaper but it's also a lot easier to fundraise for such a turnkey solution because it's easier to imagine a shipping container that turns into a farm. Your donation will go to one of these boxes which we'll set up in this African neighborhood...etc.

$60,000 is way more expensive than the 2 acre land it serves in most parts of India

... or USA :)

I worked on a project to create affordable, electric vegetable graters for rural farmers in Ghana [1]. For comparison, the price point of our grater was $150USD and was still seen as too expensive by a substantial portion of our customers, some of whom opted to purchase the graters on an installment basis (3 x $50 every 6 months as our group traveled to Ghana bi-annually).

The main problems our rural customers faced were much more basic in nature and cannot be solved by a $60k farming kit: uncontrollable and sometimes devastating wet/dry seasonal cycles that could decimate an entire crop, making financial planning very difficult. Subsequently many of our customers lived day-to-day off whatever they sold their produce for at the market, making securing loans/financing to invest in capital (more land, equipment, livestock) impossible.

At one of the farms we visited, I noticed a half-built brick house next to the main family house. The farm owner explained that they were building a second home, but that they had to do it literally "brick-by-brick", purchasing a few bricks with extra income when they could afford to buy them. He explained this investment in bricks was their form of saving for the future: the small amounts of extra money would get spent otherwise on food or other necessities rather than put into a bank account or stashed under a mattress.

Other basic problems included a relatively high marginal cost of transporting goods to market and little access to market price data. No agricultural education info. Communal access to heavy farming machinery (graters, plows, etc.) with no accountability for these devices (they end up breaking and nobody wants to pay to fix them). Unreliable electric grid, and no chance the cellular service would be reliable/affordable enough to get an IoT system up and running on a small farm, even if the farmers did have time left over after planting, harvesting, and processing their crops, and looking after their families. Everything is harder and more manual when you lack scale, and you can't order a replacement solar panel/battery/raspberry pi off amazon.

Since the goal of our project was to get the grater into the hands of as many cassava-grating women as possible, at marginally-above-cost, we decided to sell into restaurants and explore other cash-rich markets to cross-subsidize sales to small acreage farmers. We also wanted to sell direct, or close-to-direct (at least in the beginning) to build a relationship with our customers, get to know them, get feedback on the products, and spread news of the product thru word of mouth.

That said, maybe we should have looked to sell our graters to governments/NGOs so we could have scaled up faster.

[1] http://www.olin.edu/academics/experience/engineering-capston...

I've seen brick by brick construction before in peruvian shantytowns, but they lived in the houses the entire time.

They would start with bamboo stakes, woven bamboo mats and sheets of black PVC plastic to construct temporary walls and and claim squatting rights on the land. Then they would slowly buy bricks and stack them up to supplement the walls.

Eventually they would buy cement to construct proper walls and proper roofing materials (the black PVC sheeting was used as a roof until then)

In the long term, they might repeat the process and start on a second story.

Based on what you have said here I feel like technology such as iPhones and IoT networks is not what these people need. Would it help to provide some kind of farming manual with instructions on how to build and maintain farm equipment, how to create a co-op to sell locally, etc? Has it been done? What about providing a printing press to publish pricing data on a daily/weekly basis to try and make that information available to more people? These seem like problems that must have existed in the US in the last 100-150 years, what did we do?

There was this phone-based software created by a research team. https://hci.stanford.edu/research/voice4all/

"In places such as rural India, small-scale farmers struggle to meet the challenges of fierce global competition, increasing costs of farm inputs, water shortages, and new diseases and pests brought on by a changing climate. To deal with these challenges, information has become a critical input to farming operations: faced with rapidly changing conditions, farmers need market information, timely technical advice, and alerts on new and improved techniques. There are currently few sources for reliable, timely knowledge. Television and radio have achieved remarkable penetration in rural areas and stand as an effective means of information dissemination. However, without a platform to discuss, debate, and relate personal experience, information is not actionable.

Social media - email, blogs, wikis, forums, and social networks - has revolutionized how people learn and share expertise on the web, but the Internet and its associated access technologies (broadband connectivity, PCs) are out of reach for much of rural India. Even if Internet-connected PCs were available, widespread usage is constrained by language and literacy barriers. But while computers are unaffordable or unfamiliar to rural communities, mobile phones are not.

Avaaj Otalo is a service for farmers to access relevant and timely agricultural information over the phone. This service was designed in the summer of 2008 as a collaboration between UC Berkeley School of Information, Stanford HCI Group, IBM India Research Laboratory and Development Support Center (DSC), an NGO in Gujarat, India.

By dialing a phone number and navigating through simple audio prompts, farmers can record, browse, and respond to agriculturual questions and answers. In addition to the Q&A forum, the service includes an announcements board of headline-like snippets updated regularly by DSC staff, and a radio archive to listen to past episodes of DSC's popular weekly radio program."

Avaaj Otalo led to the founding of Awaaz.De (literally, "give voice"), a company in India that provides a hosted solution for deploying voice-based social media.

To go one level deeper than the unpredictable weather and poor economics of the small-time farm, I think much of the "problem" of subsistence farming is cultural/societal and there's not much the rural farmers or the NGOs/charities can do to help other than one-off projects like the cassava grater that address specific, painful parts of the process, such as manual grating, but not the entire subsistence farming process/system as a whole.

We spent some time with the best and the brightest Ghanaian college students at Ashesi University [1], many of whom were middle/upper class and set on entering business and politics after graduation. Some discussed practical solutions to the problem, such as farmer co-ops. But all were fed up with the corruption and unstable governance of the country - which is actually extremely stable compared to Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad (Boko Haram). I heard that word 20 times during the half a day we spent with them - corruption this, corruption that. I left with the feeling that the current government and previous generations had let these students down, but that they were determined not to repeat those mistakes.

We also met the CEO and founder of the University, Patrick Awuah, who studied at Swarthmore in 1985 on a full scholarship and went on to work at Microsoft for 8 years as a software engineer and manager. He firmly believes in instilling ethics and self-reliance through education is the way forward for the country, and indeed the entire continent: "If you come back in 30 years, universities will be competing for the best and brightest students. I hope that universities will also be competing on things such as whose students are the most ethical. If that happens, it will change the continent."

I used to believe that religion was a crucial and effective way of passing an ethical code from one generation to the next. But every Ghanaian I met was either Christian or Muslim, and some even expressed concern for my soul when I said I wasn't religious. All taxi drivers would say a prayer and touch their jesus piece hanging from the rear view mirror before every journey (very disconcerting). I also spent some time in Afghanistan, where during the month of Ramadan, I and the other expats had to drink water out of sight in the bathroom at work when we were thirsty so as not to offend practicing muslims, and the entire country shut down after 2pm every day.

Yet despite hugely religious populations, both of these countries experience high levels of corruption, which I think isn't worse than the corruption that occurs in the US, it's just more visible - there's not enough to go around so favor currying/bribes/tribalism is more apparent than it is in wealthier nations where we've developed discrete ways of channeling and accumulating wealth. Corruption in poorer countries is very "in your face" - bribes to the police or politicians, kidnapping, torture, murder.

I'm not sure how it happened, but we were able to build better infrastructure in the US over the past 150 years - both physical (power, water, transportation, internet) and social (checks and balances, constitution, BOR, legal system, decently-managed welfare system). There was a lot of prosperity to go around, after WWII ended the great depression at least.

I suspect it had a lot to do with our financial successes following WWII and the unprecedented technological progress over the past century that allowed the majority of people in the US to prosper. I think our strong capitalist roots also helped, as we moved from an agriculture -> industrial -> services based economy (not a value judgment), while much of Africa was subjected to colonization and many of its resources, both material and human capital, were sent elsewhere. We corporatized and scaled up our agricultural sector, which has its pros (less back breaking labor, a lot more food) and cons (blander, genetically-weaker crops, danger of oligopoly). I think Mr. Awuah's comment is interesting because in 30 years, the best and the brightest Ghanaians may feel compelled to return home and improve life for their fellow Ghanaians, the same way he did after studying and working abroad.

In summary I believe more forward-thinking universities like Ashesi and more leaders like Patrick Awuah need to step forward to help instill a love for ethics, altruism, and the feeling of eating hard-earned bread after a long day of work in bright young students. This will address the core of the problem of the back-breaking labor needed for subsistence farming, but will take a long time. Until then we can chip away at edge problems, like cassava grating, and as another commenter pointed out, information access through smart phones.

This is all conjecture though, and I'm not big on either African or US history, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

[1] In 2012, the university was ranked by PwC as the seventh most respected organisation in Ghana, becoming the first university to make the list. Ashesi's President, Dr. Patrick Awuah, was also ranked the 4th Most Respected CEO in Ghana. In 2015, Africa.com again named Ashesi among its list of top 10 African Universities (excluding South Africa). (From > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashesi_University)

> I used to believe that religion was a crucial and effective way of passing an ethical code from one generation to the next. But every Ghanaian I met was either Christian or Muslim, and some even expressed concern for my soul when I said I wasn't religious.

I suspect what you might be seeing is moral licensing. I was first introduced to this as a discrete concept in Malcolm Gladwell's podcast Revisionist History (episode 1). Interestingly, he predicted that because of it Hillary Clinton would suffer quite harsh criticism if she were to be elected (prior to the election). Listening to it for the first time after the election I couldn't help but think he was right in general but quite off about how it would be expressed. We had just elected the first black president, after all...

> Yet despite hugely religious populations, both of these countries experience high levels of corruption, which I think isn't worse than the corruption that occurs in the US, it's just more visible.

Can you explain yourself more? In your opinion: Is the US succeeding despite the corruption or is it the difference in the type of corruption that is holding Ghana back?

Also thank you for your comment, very interesting and refreshing!

As i read it the longterm water supply is the main problem? Is there a way to cheaply build synthetic cysterns, that can be fixed with existing such as clay? I thought about freeze/heat fracturing?

You mentioned communal access to capital equipment - what was the organizational structure that acquired/owned this equipment? And how was this organisation run and to whom was it accountable?

Not OP, but thought this link to Hungary's attempts at collective farming might be relevant [1]. Being Hungarian, I've heard many anecdotal stories lamenting the abolishment of that system, to the detriment of small land owners. (In general, in the post-socialist economy, nothing seems to have taken its place, leading to obvious problems of scale and access to equipment.)

The last sentence in the article is quite shocking, though unattributed:

> By 1989, Hungary's total annual agricultural output was larger than that of France.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_Hungary

Oh yeah - I'm Israeli, so I know what a well-known run agricultural collective can do (in the kibbutz as well as the "lite" version, the moshava). I'm more curious to know what the equivalent structure is in Ghana, and why it has such trouble managing equipment. This has been done before, they're just not doing it well.

Have you guys tried indoor farming?

They are building a house a few bricks at a time using discretionary income after necessities to buy those bricks. Indoor farming would be far too expensive.

Indoor farming requires does to be in.

What, no dirt? It's pretty much just the irrigation system? And lights for you I hope.

It should come with some tarps and compost at least. It appears to have a nursery, so potting soil and nursery containers hopefully come with it too. I mean all this stuff is cheap, but if they're going to deploy a shipping container, might as well put some of the obvious stuff in it.

For fun, I was looking at cheap (compared to San Francisco) land with no infrastructure in Wyoming. 1 acre of land, $10K USD. Drilling a water well that might work, $5K to $30K.

Wyoming?! That's our backyard. Drop by our office sometime! [1] Our CEO ran a CSA for a few years here in Wyoming. Places like Wyoming have cheap land, but there are some tricks to doing farming up here.

1: https://brightagrotech.com/

I'm in Colorado and the soil here is terrible trying to start a small garden behind my house. Even with purchased good quality dirt and fertilizer, it's still very very hard solid.

Back in college, I took a soil science class. The professor said the Laramie valley has (used to at least) pretty good soil – fairly light and decent nutrient profile. There was a big western farm boom in the 1910's during a wet period that lasted 10-20 years. I'm not overly familiar with all the soil types in Colorado.

We have one farmer who uses some of our equipment, but he has also had good luck with soil in Fort Collins, CO [1]. He's on a hill though near a lake which might help. He said drainage was important for him.

Vertical farming is a great way to get around issues with soil quality. Especially for winter growing and also reducing the labor associated with planting, weeding, and harvesting. Seriously though, schedule a time to drop by if you're ever up in Laramie. We have a lot of knowledgeable people here who love talking growing! One of my coworkers has also done some good work on the economics or vertical farming (using our equipment mainly, as – well – that's what we know!) [2]. Much of the economics should be comparable on other vertical systems (though, probably less efficient you know ;) ).

Are you a software dev or tech person? Always fun to talk about the combo of farm and tech!

1: http://bayberryfresh.com/ 2: https://youtu.be/u-aFueGWSFU?t=6m1s

Thank you! Indeed, I may need to take a drive up and take a peek :)

Small-house gardening, wherever you go in the world, is all about the compost. Get your compost working, and you can grow a house garden pretty much anywhere. Seriously! Composts are the key to all successful house gardens in rugged territory. (Disclaimer: It takes a couple years to boot up a good compost that'll fix yer soils..)

http://eartheasy.com/grow_compost.html

Where do you live in Colorado? I've had good luck gardening in both Boulder and Denver.

High altitude gardening (e.g., in the mountains) is difficult, but that is more due to the short growing season than the soil.

Thornton, it's all clay here :)

Have you considered double-digging? Works pretty well here in New Mexico.

double digging a garden:

    http://aces.nmsu.edu/ces/yard/2007/020307.html

For me doing that is somewhere between an escapist fantasy and a backup retirement plan. I've been looking at Idaho properties for some time now because it seemed to have favorable acreage vs price ratios.

Last year a random 40-acre hilltop plot at Indian Creek was listed for 30k and finally sold for 15k, which is amazing. Its neighboring 40-acre lot with a view of Bear Lake is currently being sold for 30k. Lots of variances in prices and terrain, including mountain tops. Or at least tall hills, whatever they officially are.

One of the weirdest incentives for me to keep looking is that certain counties in ID don't have building codes: you're on your own. That flexibility cuts both ways, but it means you could make a mud and straw house if you felt like it, without interference. Of course, cabin kits are probably safer and more practical.

I can find you some property in Maine that is closer to 2K/acre as long as you're okay being off grid. Well drilling would only be $3-5K depending on the site, and you might even get lucky and have a natural spring on the property somewhere.

We got a whole lotta land up here, and most of it is stuck in the post-lumber slump.

The soil here (in much of the state) is fairly good, but the growing season is pathetically short. Assuming you're on the plains and get a full day of sun. (If not, it's even shorter). But, on the plains, then you've got more wind than you want to deal with.

So - why Wyoming? Why don't you go some place with milder weather that isn't a desert like Kansas or Arkansas?

I was just poking around the Internet for the cheapest land I could find. I didn't look for a super long time. I think land below a certain price doesn't stand out because there's little incentive to promote it, so you have to hunt for better prices.

You can go way cheaper than 10k per acre

I wonder if the cost isn't mostly due to manufacturing labor. A good look-over by someone experienced in Lean production might help them map their value streams and get the cost way down.

I suspect part of the reason they're going high-tech with all the IoT devices is so that they can sell a lot of these domestically for profit, and thereby subsidize the ones they send overseas. Not necessarily a bad idea. And if they can get the owners/users to form an online community and capture some learning, the more the better!

They need that meat in their profit margin to accelerate the Sell Out and Bro Down steps of their business plan.

A little OT, but I'm wanting to put together a drip system in our yard. Any resources you'd recommend/found very helpful?

I live in the Pacific Northwest, so am thinking about installing a cistern/rain water collection center, then putting together a drip system for planter beds that we'll be installing.

Thank you!

I drip irrigated my entire yard (only about a quarter of an acre, so, quite small). I just used the drip irrigation stuff at home depot. Its fairly inexpensive and once you start working with it you figure out pretty quickly how it all the parts work together. I just looked at the companies website to figure out what I needed to get started.

Doesn't limescale eventually kill drip irrigation system?

Our water is as soft as a baby's bottom - so no limescale here. I'm not aware of how a drip irrigation system is affected in areas with hard water.

Could you throw a calgon into it? :)

The thing is I am not a professional farmer or have had worked in farms in any capacity. I have a technical background so doing things on my own in DIY way out of sheer curiosity drives me. Plus, I wanted to introduce myself to organic farming in my backyard. I can share with you things I bought and how I have used them, pretty straightforward stuff. I thought about putting an irrigation system where water would be driven with gravity and into drip system. But unlike you I don’t have an advantage of rainwater. So I still kept water reservoir (instead of a continuous tap/faucet as a source) and instead used an electronic water pump and a Wi-Fi outlet that I can schedule as I please or even remote control it if I am traveling abroad (I learned hard way that which certain plants required less or more water and in this way I was able to adjust water flow/resistance in my drip system)

Here’s a pseudo-schematic that I just chalked down:

http://imgur.com/a/0exTv

These are the parts I have bought off of Amazon. If you can buy these parts from a single seller than I am sure you can save even more.

Listed prices are the prices I have paid. Currently, they could be more or less on Amazon. Some parts were bought at a Lowe's local store.

Koram Drip Irrigation 1/4" Blank Distribution Tubing Drip Watering Hose 50' Roll $8.99 1 $8.99 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013WJYKZQ/ref=oh_aui_deta...

Raindrip 381025B Heavy Duty Support Stakes, 6-Inch, 25 Per Bag $7.51 2 $15.02 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BOAKKK/ref=oh_aui_deta...

Rain Bird T22-50 Drip Irrigation 1/4" Blank Distribution Tubing, 50' Roll $6.69 1 $6.69 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FJX5DU/ref=oh_aui_deta...

Fastening Tape 0.75-inch Hook & Loop Fastening Tape 5 yard/roll - Black $5.31 1 $5.31 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004AF9II6/ref=oh_aui_deta...

Koram 1/4" Blank Distribution Tubing Irrigation Gardener's Greenhouse Plant Watering Drip Kit Accessories IR-D $25.99 2 $51.98 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013JPIJG4/ref=oh_aui_deta...

Prime Wire & Cable EC502608 8-Foot 16/3 SJTW Indoor and Outdoor Extension Cord, Black $6.58 1 $6.58 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006G6A2KA/ref=oh_aui_deta...

EcoPlus 728492 Eco 100 Submersible Pump, 100GPH $11.95 1 $11.95 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007KIIQF6/ref=oh_aui_deta...

Samar 5/16-in x 20-ft PVC Clear Vinyl Tubing 1ft $2 1 $2.00 https://www.lowes.com/pd/Samar-5-16-in-x-20-ft-PVC-Clear-Vin...

Murray 2-Pack 1/4-in to 5/8-in dia Stainless Steel Full Clamps $0.71 1 $0.71 https://www.lowes.com/pd/Murray-2-Pack-1-4-in-to-5-8-in-dia-...

BrassCraft 1/2-in x 3/8-in Threaded Adapter Bushing Fitting $3.98 1 $3.98 https://www.lowes.com/pd/BrassCraft-1-2-in-x-3-8-in-Threaded...

BrassCraft 3/8-in x 3/8-in Barbed Barb x MIP Adapter Fitting $3.78 1 $3.78 https://www.lowes.com/pd/BrassCraft-3-8-in-x-3-8-in-Barbed-B...

TP-LINK Wi-Fi Smart Plug, Works with Amazon Echo, Turn On/Off Your Electronics From Anywhere (HS100) $29.99 1 $29.99 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0178IC734/ref=oh_aui_deta...

Aquarium 8Way Air Flow Splitter Lever Control Valve 3/8 Inch Tube Dia $11.76 1 $11.76 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00W136G8E/ref=oh_aui_deta...

MoonCity 3-in-1 Soil Moisture, Light and pH / acidity Meter Plant Tester,Good for Gardener or planter both indoor and outdoors (No Battery needed) $12.99 1 $12.99 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017GQ9VVY/ref=od_aui_deta...

30 gallons plastic container from home depot $20 1 $20.00

Total $191.73

DripWorks has a great catalog and good prices.

Let me reply to your post by EOD. I will be able to provide better details then.

You also get the container too, which they say expands in size.

That's about $2k for a good one. Say $4k for the expanding one.