A Simple Milk Churner for Ghee-Making

摘要

Most smallholder dairy farmers in sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to grid electricity due to their sparse location and, thus, do not have means for cooling their milk. Their evening milk cannot get to markets the next day without spoiling. Where possible, the evening milk is consumed locally. In cases where there is no local market, the milk is either wasted or used to make a ghee-like product. Fermented milk (makamo) churning is the most laborious and time consuming component of the ghee-making process. Additionally, the traditional manual process is considered unsatisfactory with respect to meeting acceptable hygiene standards. This report includes the design, construction and testing of a simple milk churner for smallholder dairy farmers that reduces traditional churning process time from 8 to 1 hour, while improving production hygiene.