Manual threshing of crops is a very labor and time intensive process that results in high human energy expenditure and high labor costs. On many smallholder farms, mechanical threshers can replace manual threshing by hand beating; a practice that often results in grain spillage, grain breakage and incomplete separation of the grain from the chaff. The Soybean Innovation Lab’s low-cost, locally produced and serviced multi-crop thresher can reduce post-harvest loss by 35%. The thresher is 40times faster than manual threshing and requires only two operators, saving farmers time and money. Commercially available multi-crop threshers that were also tested had from 5-50% machine loss of grain, required more people to operate, and produced large amounts of dust. The SIL thresher, which has different threshing concave for different crops, sells in Ethiopia for approximately $2,500 up to 3,000 U.S. and is designed for group of middle-sized farmers or for-hire service providers who can also provide threshing services to groups of smallholder farmers.
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