Assessment of Additive Manufacturing for Increasing Sustainability and Productivity of Smallholder Agriculture

The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) seeks to increase both the sustainability and the productivity of smallholder rice farms, but the adoption of this methodology is constrained by local access to appropriate mechanical equipment. Valuable information about real difficulties in the adoption of SRI was collected through communications with five field partners. Two primary mechanization obstacles were identified, that is, the availability and performance of a roller component on a push seeder and a rotor component on a push weeder. The potential of additive manufacturing (AM), and especially material extrusion three-dimensional (3D) printing (ME3DP), to assist in overcoming the identified obstacles was assessed for two cases while considering both local prototyping and low-volume production. A simplified cost model was used to compare with the cost of manufacturing both in the United States and locally in the field. The acquired data suggests that in specific cases current ME3DP technology can more rapidly provide functional parts, accelerating the design cycle and lowering cost by about a factor of 10 relative to local fabrication routes. In the case where mechanical performance is critical and dimensional precision and surface finish are not, wire arc metal AM appears promising, but it is not as economical as fabrication by traditional means in the field.