When film technician Jock Brandis discovered cotton being grown in traditionally food-bearing fields in a village in southern Mali, he decided to do something about it.

He observed to villagers that growing cotton would rob their soil of nitrogen, and suggested they plant peanuts either around the cotton plants or in rotation with cotton. Peanuts have several advantages. They fix nitrogen in the soil; they are more profitable; and they're rich in protein. But the problem, they replied, is husking them by hand.

Jock promised he would return with a machine, but discovered that no small-scale machine exists. So he set about designing one that local people could build on the spot and fix themselves.

The film follows Jock and his set of fiberglass molds back to Mali, where he worked with local villagers to perfect and manufacture their own hand-operated peanut husker. Produced at a material cost of approximately $10, for concrete and steel, each machine is easily capable of husking 100 pounds of peanuts per hour.

Ibrahim Togola, the head of the Mali Folkecenter for Renewable Energy, sees the peanut-sheller as appropriate technology that villagers can master, and use to improve their own communities.