The Complete Manual of Small-scale Food Processing

Peter Fellows

Small-scale food processing is important worldwide. For individual processors, it is highly accessible as a start-up business, especially for women; farmers and fishermen can readily diversify into processing to increase their incomes; and high added-value enables processors to earn an income from r...

Design, fabrication and testing of a millet thresher

A thresher was developed for threshing, separating, and cleaning millet seeds. The major components of the machine include threshing, separation and cleaning units.

Mushroom Production for Sustainable Livelihoods

This manual is a culmination of Practical Action Southern Africa's work in Chakohwa. The project worked with the Chakohwa Community-Based Organisation (CCBO) in Chimanimani District of Manicaland province. The aim of the project was to provide income earning opportunities for HIV and aids orphans an...

Fodder Conservation Using a Manual Baler

A simple method for baling fodder.

How to Grow Your Own Onion Seed

Here is some basic information on how to grow onions and produce onion seeds. The document focuses on Burkina Faso but this approach can be used in many other locations.

How to Make Sausages

A wide variety of sausages are produced in countries throughout the world. Most are produced from meat (especially pork and beef) but in some countries, fish sausages are also popular. Vegetarian and vegan sausages are available in some countries, made from tofu, nuts, pulses, mycoprotein, soy...

Extrusion of Foods

There are two types of extrusion process: cold extrusion, which mixes and shapes foods such as biscuit dough and pasta without cooking them; and hot extrusion (or extrusion cooking).

Farmers' Choice

Helene Bie Lilleør, Ulrik Lund-Sørensen

Food security is an urgent international priority. However, agricultural extension methods that relied on imposing centrally-developed technological solutions have been ineffective, since small farmers in developing countries often cultivate marginal lands, working under constraints for which these...

Pumpkin Growing using Sandbar Cropping

This brief describes a way of growing crops on the sandbars, created by river deposits in Bangladesh, and how this can be used to increase crop production for marginalised famers.

Small Farmers, Big Change

David Wilson, Kirsty Wilson, Claire Harvey

Support for smallholder agriculture is seen as increasingly important, both to boost the food security and incomes of the rural poor and to provide food for urban populations. But to achieve scale in agricultural interventions, NGOs must move beyond a project-by-project approach and instead enable f...