Researcher Hopes Rice Huller Will Aid Third World
If Allen Dong’s rice huller was much cheaper, it would be free, which wouldn’t bother him because he doesn’t plan to profit from it anyway.
In fact, Dong didn’t even patent the hand-powered contraption he devised that he says will make it easier for poor people in Third World countries to extract life-sustaining rice kernels from their hulls.
“I was looking into the various kinds of rice hullers and saw that they cost between $2,000 and $40,000,” said Dong, a researcher with the UC Davis land, air and water resources department.
“I decided to make one in the $200 range, and after I made one, I kept going until I got it down to a kit costing $2.50 in this country,” Dong said as he displayed his device at the university’s student experimental farm.
No patent has been sought for the rice huller, and Dong has turned it over to the public domain. He says it isn’t practical for large California and other American rice growers to use, and a patent would have no effect in Third World countries where he hopes it will be used.
“I’m living in a wealthy country. I don’t need to get wealthy off the Third World,” he said.
Over the centuries, the time-consuming process of removing protective hulls involved beating rice kernels in a grinding bowl. That method has been replaced by mechanical hullers in advanced nations but still is used in many poor countries. Mechanical hullers that are used in poor regions are expensive to operate and maintain because they are made elsewhere, making replacement parts hard to find, Dong said.
To overcome that problem, he simply took a small, hand-powered grinding mill that is common throughout the world and replaced the ridged grinding plate with a softer rubber plate. The softer plate pulverizes the outer rice hull, leaving the rice kernel ready to cook or market.
Dong said he won’t mind if a corporation makes a minor change in his invention, patents it and makes huges profits.
“They’d have to find a way to do it for less than $2.50.” he said. “It’s so simple, cheap and easy to do. Why would anybody pay money for what they can do themselves?”
