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"  Gurus of appropriate tech, such as inventor Jock Brandis, try to come up with simple solutions that make a huge difference, usually for people in developing countries. But, he says, he&amp;#039;s coming to find out that some of these devices can change lives right here in the United States. As co-founder and director of research and development at the Full Belly Project, a North Carolina\u2013based nonprofit engineering group dedicated to helping people in rural communities, Brandis has been designing sustainable, efficient, and easy-to-use agricultural tools for communities in developing countries like Uganda, Haiti, and the Philippines for more than a decade. For the past four years, though, Brandis and colleagues have been rethinking small farm technology in Appalachia based on work they&amp;#039;ve done in Africa. They work mostly with farmers in Rutherford County, North Carolina, a largely rural area about an hour outside of Asheville. &amp;quot;Someone from Rutherford County contacted me and said, &amp;#039;I saw Full Belly stuff in Africa,&amp;#039; &amp;quot; Brandis says. &amp;quot;When he learned it came from North Carolina, he got pissed. He thought, well, if Africa has access to it, how come people in North Carolina don&amp;#039;t?&amp;quot; Brandis, a Canadian, initially had little experience in the U.S. outside of its cities, so he didn&amp;#039;t believe that a water pump designed to help Ugandan farmers would have much value in the States. Despite the vast difference in wealth between the U.S. and Uganda, however, smart solutions for small farms can improve production in both places. All it took for Brandis to see this was a trip to Rutherford County. &amp;quot;I watched a farmer climb down a hill carrying two buckets filled with water and then back up the hill\u2014all this for watering blueberries because there&amp;#039;d been such a bad drought,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;It was just like in Africa. There are all kinds of really simple solutions and technologies that would be perfect here because it&amp;#039;s still the land of the 40-acre farmer.&amp;quot; One of the group&amp;#039;s primary projects has been decentralizing water systems on Appalachian farms using solar technology. &amp;quot;We discovered that with solar tech, if you generate 12 volts and use it instantly in the farmer&amp;#039;s field\u2014don&amp;#039;t store it, don&amp;#039;t convert it\u2014it&amp;#039;s incredibly inefficient,&amp;quot; Brandis says. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve also figured out that it&amp;#039;s much cheaper to store water than it is electricity.&amp;quot;  The result is Full Belly Project&amp;#039;s Solar Hand Cart, a basic water pump that can irrigate a couple of acres or provide H2O to a water trough with nothing more than a large solar panel and simple timers and pumps. A pickup truck or ATV can easily move the cart from point to point.  Like Full Belly Project&amp;#039;s other projects\u2014including a low-water hand-washing station and a sheller that can shell peanuts at the rate of 120 pounds per hour (as opposed to an average 2 pounds per hour by hand)\u2014the Solar Hand Cart is made from simple materials and requires nothing more than human power and available natural resources. It consists of one or two solar panels attached to a movable aluminum trailer and a submersible pump made from two brushless 12-volt DC pumps encased in noncorroding material and attached to a standard garden hose. These impelled pumps instantly drain all the water in the delivery line back to the water source, making the system frost-proof. A waterproof power cord connects the solar panel and pump, while small, often unmapped streams\u2014common throughout Appalachia\u2014provide the water. Rising water levels will activate a float switch, deactivating the pump until more water is necessary.  The Solar Hand Cart can pump 2500 gallons of water at 50 psi on an average day. That&amp;#039;s enough to irrigate 3 acres of land or provide water for 70 head of cattle. As an added bonus, the cart&amp;#039;s 12-volt car battery can be used with an inverter to charge laptops and cellphones in case of a power outage.  Brandis says he also receives many requests for simpler designs, like Full Belly Project&amp;#039;s Rocker Pump, a treadle-style water pump made from local materials that can extract 5 gallons of water per minute from streams. It consists of three concrete cylinders, rubber baffles (flat plates that help direct energy flow) fashioned out of old inner tubes, a series of nuts and bolts, and a wooden treadle. To operate it, the farmer places the pump upon a well and rocks back and forth atop the treadle, a motion that creates cylinder suction and draws water upward. Though much simpler than the Solar Hand Cart, Brandis says, this device suits the needs of many Appalachian farms. &amp;quot;I was convinced [the Rocker Pump] had no place in this country,&amp;quot; Brandis says. &amp;quot;But because we get a lot of these requests, we have engaged our friends at Yale University. They&amp;#039;ve started their own Full Belly Club to rethink and tweak our African inventions to work a bit better over here.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a8925/appropriate-tech-comes-to-appalachia-15450859/>