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| Address |
Tianjin University of Finance and Economics (TUFE), Tianjin, China |
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| Country |
China |
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| Title |
Spring Peanut Seeder |
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| Abstract |
Zhao Yunlong, 42, educated till junior middle school, is quite an ingenuous farmer of Cangzi Village, Zichuan District, Shandong Province in China. |
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| Details |
Background
Farmers of Cangzi village are able to generate just sufficient income from agriculture as sometimes they don’t have agricultural equipment or they possess too small a land for using or hiring large-scale agricultural machinery. So they give their farms on contract for collective cultivation and migrate to nearby cities. In Zhao’s village, there remained a piece of unused land outside the residential area. Famous for genuine love for farming, Zhao Yunlong decided to take that land on contract. He had nobody else to assist him in cultivating it.
He and his wife made the small piece of land cultivable and raised 67 pigs. The couple also tried to cultivate more than 50 Mu (equals to 8.15 acres) woodlands experimenting with cultivations like yellow peach trees, thin-skin walnut trees, peanuts, corn and so on. All these attempts failed because of environmental problems and his limited knowledge. Problems like poverty, rent for the contracted land and money to support his child’s education pestered him. He also improved some farming devices that he found inefficient like a weeder and long-range, multi-functional herbicide-scattering machine.
Innovation
Since traditional method of planting peanuts was inefficient and labour-consuming, he bought a ready-made seeder from the market to save his time, money and cost. What’s more, he did not want his wife to work too hard!
When he washed the seeder after working on several Mu of farmland, he found that many seeds were accumulated at the swirl opening and they all had been squeezed rotten. It was a great loss. He left the seeder aside and grumbled, “I should have thought about this. With such a small swirl opening, it is easy for the seeds to be squeezed”. He thought of a narrow passage and began to improve the seeder from then on. He first spun off the opening, and installed a square opening instead. This time the seeds would not be squeezed rotten, but a lot of seeds came out at the same time and resulted in wastage. So he changed the size of the square leak, which could seed evenly, but each time lots of seeds accumulated there. He tried again and again, got frustrated, but never gave up.
Once in the market, he saw children playing with glass marbles. The rule was that each marble could only be sprung once. He thought of applying that rule to the seeder. He installed a spring and a small piece of metal plate in the seeder. But either the spring was not elastic enough for the seeds to spring out, or the seeds would still be squeezed rotten. He improved it many times and finally, attached one side of the spring to the flywheel of the seeder’s wheel. While he pushed the seeder, the chain on the connecting wheels drove the flywheel turning; the flywheel pulled one end of the spring, and made the seeds come out of a small slot on a small platform. Finally, the small metal plate pulled by the spring would spring the seed out. One pull, one spring and one seed, he succeeded.
Zhao Yunlong found that with the improved spring seeder, one could seed ten Mu farmland in one day, while manual labour could seed only two Mu farmland earlier. He finally found the door to his Xanadu (an idyllic and a very beautiful place). |
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| Volume No. |
Honey Bee 20(1); 20, 2009 |
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| Sout |
Prof Bian Cuilan |
