Yusuf Khan, school-dropout, ex-farmer and one-time second hand car dealer in Kuwait, tired of hearing farmers in his secondhand-tractor shop in Rajasthan grumbling about trying to find labor during groundnut harvesting season, set about building a machine to do it. It took him a year, three prototypes and 50,000 rupees. His groundnut digger fits on to a tractor and, via an array of crankshafts, flywheel, linkages and rotating vanes, digs, scoops and drops groundnut and soil into a vibrating storage unit. The vibrations shake the soil loose from the nut, which then falls through a sieve in the base of the storage unit leaving just the groundnut—a modification Mr. Khan claims other groundnut diggers don’t offer. It can cover a hectare a day, which would require 100 workers working for about 80 rupees a day.

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