UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

Pedaling for Water in Kisumu: Closing (3 of 3) 2017.09.12 In my second week in Kenya, I was back to visiting farmers, both with Vibrant Village and through other connections. However, I receive my biggest surprize in between site visits. I was walking with Ernest Kulali, a field officer and farmer from Vibrant Village, and he was telling me about the effectiveness of farming techniques. Using traditional methods, Ernest was getting 20kg of maize (corn) in a season from his shamba , his farm . When he switched to using purchased seeds and fertilizer, the same land produced 360 to 540kg of maize. What!? I had him run the numbers by me again, 20kgs → the range of 400kgs. I still didn’t believe it, but Nick the Vibrant Village director later agreed that farmers were seeing that magnitude of increase. Not just doubling their income/food supply, but a twenty-fold return! Further farming modifications will not yield as large a jump, but that sort of scale encouraged me that changing te...

Pedaling for Water in Kisumu: Midway (2 of 3) 2017.08.26 Jua kali - literal translation from Swahili is “hot sun” Colloquially means “modifications” as in the changes made by the workers out in the sun in order to keep things running Tuesday night around 8pm, when I was reassembling the pump’s gearbox, my heart sank. Earlier in the evening, I had made a bold choice to repair the gearbox with a larger gear than before. It would improve the performance, but I hadn’t tested the change. Plus, the larger gear had been welded permanently in place, so no take-backs. My feeling of doom stemmed from a big issue: the larger gear wouldn’t fit between gearbox’s support bolts, rendering the pump unusable. I could move the bolts, but only if I could drill new 10mm holes that night. All of the engineering shops and even hardware stores in town had been closed for hours, and my ride to meet farmers would be leaving at 7am the following morning. Adrian -a tall, red-headed, French-Hung...

Pedaling for Water in Kisumu: Beginning (1 of 3) 2017.08.20 Karibu - Swahili for “welcome” Idea: A low-cost irrigation pump for small-scale farmers that is powered by a bicycle. Bike powered irrigation pump design reconstructed at UC Davis Motivation: “In the dry season, it’s bad. There is no food.” “Most people, we wait for the rain.”  -Jared, a Nairobi Uber Driver During a layover in Nairobi, I talked with a driver, Jared, that summed up much of the motivation for this bike pump project. Jared wanted to buy a irrigation pump so that he and his family could have food and sell food during the dry season. Of the poor households in Africa, most (80%) are farmers, and very few irrigate their land (only 4% of sub-Saharan farmland). Gasoline and solar pumps are too expensive for most people, so Jared is saving up. Other organizations successfully make irrigation pumps more accessible through a cheaper “treadle” design that works like stair-master exerci...