I'm in the process of trying (and it is trying at the moment) to write my thesis for an MSc in rural development. It's on machinery (surprise, surprise!) and the role it plays in rural development policy.
Considering the UK give £5.5bn in aid to developing countries, and a proportion is focused directly on agriculture and rural development, I reckoned it would be a good idea to find an expert who knew what they were on about.
Because agriculture features fairly heavily in development, with a large proportion of countries GDP's coming from the land, I thought that mechanisation should feature in some way or another .
I contacted DFID (Department for International Development) - which doles out most of the UK's aid - to ask if someone could help.
This was the response I got:
'I forwarded your e-mail to my colleagues who deal with farming and research, but they say they wouldn't deal with this sort of thing - we don't have any agriculture machinery specialists in DFID and we don't fund any research on agriculture machinery or on farm mechanisation policy.'
Ok, I thought. Until I got the magazine Developments through the post. I'm a little intrigued as to how they managed to harvest fields without even hand tools (still machinery).
I find it incredulous that machinery doesn't seem to feature in development policy. And no, I'm not talking about big, shiny, red tractors. I'm talking about novel irrigation methods, easy-to-fix second-hand tractors and cultivation kit that works with the environment it's meant to.
It's comforting to learn from a soldier currently on tour, however, that ammonium nitrate is being dolled out pretty freely to farmers in Afghanistan. Great for both the lucrative poppy crop and roadside bombs, too.
It's a good point, Emily. I suspect that there have been a few bad experiences with ID-funded machinery being sold on the black market.
I only have experience of East African aid programmes but there, since unemployment is so high, "labour-saving" devices are treated with disdain.
I agree that simple water engineering and renewable energy are the way forward.