11/3/08 - Sorghum 101 with Jeff Dahlberg

11/3/2008-

The true turning point in our project came in the form of a Skype call.

Dr. Jeff Dahlberg from the National Sorghum Producers graciously offered hours of his time to teach us all about sorghum. He gave us more insight and information that could never have been obtained through the means of books and internet searches. He spoke about his time working with the Peace Corps, the use of sorghum, and the need for a manual thresher in developing countries. In addition, he invited us to the American Seed Trade Association's Seed Expo.



One of the most important things we learned is that sorghum is eaten by the poorest of the poor in developing countries - other grains such as corn and rice are far too expensive for the people who need the most aid.



After our Skype call, we decided that our primary focus was to build a manual sorghum and millet thresher to aid women in Sub-Saharan Africa, who spend many long, arduous hours engaged in the tedious process of threshing sorghum and millet by mortar and pestle.

Emboldened with a much more specific vision of what to design and build, we set about the next stages of the project with determination.

12/9/08 - 12/12/08 - Photos from the Seed Expo in Chicago

Our team with our poster!



We received a lot of information about how the machines that we saw there worked.



We attended a private meeting with some of the top engineers at Almaco, a company that produces research threshers.



We also had dinner with Dr. Jeff Dahlberg from the National Sorghum Producers and Mr. Tim Lust who gave us a lot of helpful tips and a taste of Chicago's famous deep-dish pizza! Yummmm!



When it was all over, we were tired, but we came away with a ton of ideas and we hope to implement them into our machine. Again, thank you to all the people who helped us, we can't thank you enough!!

12/9/08 - 12/12/08 - The American Seed Trade Association's Seed Expo 2008

Attending the American Seed Trade Association's Seed Expo 2008 and 63rd Corn & Sorghum Research Conference was a fantastic experience for the Teen Technology MIT InvenTeam. Many thanks to all – your thoughts and advice were very beneficial to our research and developments. Thank you to Dr. Jeff Dahlberg for making such an experience possible!

In particular, it was very enriching to the team to speak with representatives from all branches of the industry. The vast breadth of the conference encompassed everything from digital seed-scanning software to colossal combines. Such a variety allowed our team to gain a comprehensive outlook on the agricultural industry as a whole – an outlook that could not be gained by merely reading encyclopedias or perusing websites.

The representatives of all companies were particularly helpful. Even if our research did not pertain to their branch of the industry, they gave us useful information about their own projects and experiences, and also directed us to individuals who worked on projects relevant to our own. The MIT InvenTeam would like to again sincerely thank them for their efforts. There is no substitute in the realm of invention for an expert's insight on a project idea.