Manual Multi - crop Planter for Peasant Farmers

Farming today has gone beyond subsistence farming that produces for the farmer and his household. Research shows that the consumption of grains or cereal crops is at an alarming rate in the world, so to encourage small farm holders a manually operated multi-crop hand push planter with changeable metering devices for cowpea, maize and soybean was designed, fabricated and evaluated to improve planting efficiency and reduce drudgery involved in manual planting method. The laboratory and field tests were conducted to determine weight of seeds discharged from the planter, seed percentage damage, field capacity, average depth of placement of seeds in furrow, average inter-row spacing of seeds and the emergence of the seedlings. Results revealed that the planter had field efficiency and field capacity of 76.3% and 0.39 ha/hr with seed rate of 0.25 kg/ha, 0.18 kg/ha and 0.21kg/ha respectively for cowpea, maize and soybean. Percentage difference between the seed damage of 3.54%, 2.32% and 1.32% of cowpea, maize and soybean respectively obtained was from an average spacing of 40.8cm and depth of 3.98cm. The single-row multi-crop planter is very simple to use and it is maintenance free, except for the bearings which needs to be lubricated from time to time to allow the planter's ground wheel to move freely. For this design, the drive shaft directly controls the seed metering mechanism which eliminates complete attachments such as pulleys, belt systems, and gears thereby eliminating complexities that increase cost, and increasing efficiency at a highly reduced cost which is the focus of this project work. The planter can be easily maintained without any technicality and all materials used for the fabrication are locally available in the case of worn-out parts