Their primary objective was to increase the cost effectiveness of
peanut agriculture as a means of
sustainable development in those countries, through the development of affordable
appropriate technology. There are an estimated half billion people across the globe in over 100 countries, primarily in the equatorial regions and particularly in Africa, dependent upon peanuts as their primary source of protein. The major
limiting factor for growing peanuts has always been the time- and labor-intensive process of hand-shelling peanuts, a job usually relegated to women and children. Overcoming this technical obstacle has been a goal of agricultural research for some years. When Dr. T. Williams, senior research scientist at
University of Georgia and an expert on all 15,000
cultivars of peanuts, was first approached by
Jock Brandis, the project's engineer, he stated that an affordable peanut sheller is considered the "
holy grail of
sustainable development". The final design for the machine was completed in January 2005, and has come to be known as the
Universal Nut Sheller. This relatively small, hand-powered device made from two pieces of
concrete and a handful of metal pieces is able to shell at a rate of 50 kg of peanuts an hour. On average, an individual woman or child can hand shell 1.5 kg of peanuts in a single hour. Furthermore, one set of
fiberglass molds can reproduce an indefinite number of machines. Raw materials for the machine include only half a sack of
concrete and a few metal parts, which cost less than $50 US per machine. Maintenance is nearly zero, and a machine's lifespan is estimated at twenty years. Other versions of the UNS have been designed: • An "electrical powered sheller" has been designed in 2008 after a request from an orphanage in
Haiti and is also distributed in
Guyana. • A "pedal powered sheller" was designed in 2009 to shell faster. It has been distributed in the
Philippines, in Guyana, and in
Guatemala. ==Soap for Hope==