Philippines

In 2006, The Full Belly Project collaborated with the MIT graduate student, Illac Diaz to bring the Universal Nut Sheller to the Philippine Islands.

According to Mr. Diaz,

"Peanuts are a popular source of protein and are widely available in the islands, especially in the Northern provinces where a more moderate temperature and soil conditions have made the areas a source for commercial production of the crop. However the volume has been largely erratic. While the annual demand for peanuts is more than 45,000 MT, almost half of this amount is imported from other countries. The two primary motives for bringing (The Full Belly Project’s) appropriate technology to the country were to minimize the labor in shelling the peanuts for planting and post harvest for sale in the market.

The initial trails were done on the San Antonio Farms, two hours from the main city where the main crop was peanuts. In planting the two hectares, the traditional way would be to hire women and children to take out the seeds manually to avoid damaging the thin skin protecting the legume. The seeds were dried by the roadside for a number of days and then put in the cement machine. These would improve the shelling rate from the one kilo an hour to the improved rate of 50 kilos an hour, with a eight percent average damage. These machines would be assembled with the assistance of the of the farmers who took two days to mix and dry the cement before the assembly. The machines were initially lent to other neighbors for their shelling requirements, but later a type of micro-enterprise began occurring where the machines were rented for a flat fee or a per bag fee.

A press coverage of the project in the Pangasinan paper raised the interest of the Holcim Cement Group in the La Union area where they wanted to introduce the machine for the communities where majority raised peanuts as an intercrop. These began a series of talks which lead to a seminar that brought a group of farmers to the factory to build 40 shellers. The mayor was present as one of the main livelihood projects were sweet confectionaries like peanut butter, peanut brittle and other sweets, and preferred the unshelled nuts to ease input into the production. Four molds were left in the province and to my knowledge they are still being used to make a limited number of shellers by a group of masons.

Upon invitation, the governor of Isabella, Grace Padaca, who was looking for livelihood projects for the second largest peanut producing province sent an invite to teach communities how to build the cement peanut sheller. Ten fiberglass molds were brought to the province for a two day workshop were 50 participants built shellers which were later distributed among the farmers. The governor has created a subsidy of Php 2000 which is 75% of the cost for people that would want to purchase the shellers for use on their farms. As of the moment, we are informed that more than 100 shellers have been acquired in this manner. Universal Nut Shellers have been sent to Indonesia as a seed project. We anticipate more growth as the desire to have the Sheller grows."

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