Keeping it simple: what resource-poor farmers will need from agricultural engineers during the next decade.

Abstract In the past, resource-poor farmers have not received nearly enough benefits from the world's agricultural engineers because too many of the engineers' schemes and tools have been too expensive, too complicated, too large or too fragile. We must try to think always of schemes, tools and systems that cost in tens of pounds, if possible, not in hundreds or thousands of pounds. A whole series of trends for the near future are already apparent. Resource-poor farmers will be intensifying their agriculture, which means more intercropping, more biomass production per hectare, more green manuring and cover cropping, more multi-storied systems combining trees with crops and more diversity and integration of that diversity. There will also be more use of marginal areas, which will result in a major shift toward water-harvesting and soil recuperation. These changes will bring a tremendous need for additional water technologies, especially micro-scale water harvesting systems and ways of economizing the use of water, plus green manure systems, with systems of strip and zero tillage, agricultural and pastoral systems under dispersed trees and a whole range of varied intercrops. Specific tools that could be very useful would range from centuries-old sickles to simplified modern weed-eaters, with micro-scale water technologies probably leading the pack. To work with resource-poor farmers, agricultural engineers will have to become increasingly aware of the poorer farmers' situation and target certain technologies at this group specifically. The vast majority of the research should be done on-farm, with close and constant communication with farmers and agricultural extension personnel, or preferably as participatory or farmer-led research.