Namibia

We learned from the 2014 trip to Niger that the threshers we'd built so far were inadequate for their pearl millet. There was significantly more variation in the panicles than there was in the millet we used for testing in Massachusetts. Left: The pearl millet grown on campus at Hampshire College was extremely uniform, allowing for more predictable threshing. Right: The panicles in Namibia and Niger are much more varied, and often break apart more easily. We realized that we needed to incorporate some amount of winnowing into the process, so that the thresher would produce clean grain. The Ant [...]