Farmer and inventor Michris Janse van Rensburg works with small-scale farmers, in South Africa, and throughout the African continent. In his travels, he says, a question that he often faces is “how are we going to get the youth back into farming?” The obvious answer is “through technology.” With a cellphone, every small-scale farmer can leapfrog to a growing range of increasingly powerful digital tools. Yet, Michris notes, “those same small-scale farmers still have to break their backs just to insert seeds into the ground, using their fingers to cover kilometers of rows.” With this problem in hand, and a farmer’s pragmatic approach in mind—often referred to as 'n boer maak 'n plan' in his native Afrikaans— Michris got to work. That work has produced a series of back-saving, cleverly constructed, hand-propelled applicators that make small-scale farming a little easier, with a touch of swag to boot. These have brought much-needed precision and speed into the operations of small-scale farmers, vastly increasing their crop yield. In a charming talk that combines pictures, videos, and demos, with humour and heartfelt laughter, Michris takes the TEDxJohannesburg audience through his creative process. Find Michris on the Web: backsaver.co.za
