Senga Bay, Malawi …“It was our plan to design a new, innovative farm tractor that would be simple, yet capable of doing multiple tasks,” stated Tom Rich, the inventor of the new piece of mechanized farm equipment. “We have been surprised and quite pleased to see the tractor fulfilling tasks we had not anticipated.” One of the aid workers in Malawi, Suzi Stephens, the Medical Director for the Malawi Project calls the V-Tractor, “the Swiss Army Knife of tractors,” meaning it has multiple uses. It did not take long for Samantha Ludick, and the village people in Senga Bay, Malawi to find uses for the tractor that had not even been considered in America during its development. Ludick is proud of the tractor assigned to her and her employees to help the neighboring villages, and they report their tractor is scheduled weeks ahead for various projects. She fondly refers to the tractor as “My Ferrari.” Observing her multiple uses for the tractor Richard Stephens, of the Malawi Report, states, “It appears from the multiple uses Samantha has found for the tractor that the Malawi Project and Ag International are going to be inundated with requests for these units. There value to the agricultural economy of the nation will fill a need that has here-to-fore been mostly ignored by the rest of the world. Now, we see the people in Senga Bay finding even more uses for the tractor. I can’t wait to see what they will find next. It’s an amazing unit.”
Ludick sends the following report of a new use for the tractor that had not been considered before the fourth unit arrived in Malawi in November 2009.
“The sun was shinning, and the lake was calm, so we decided to put “My Ferrari” to the test,” Ludick reports. “We had heard about all the things it could do, but being a lake resort trying to maintain our base of operations, while at the same time trying to help a number of villages with multiple needs gives us the chance to try new things with the tractor. On this particular morning we decided to find out if the tractor was really a 4 x 4 when it came to working in the sand. We had already learned a number of other uses for the tractor, but on this day we used it to move up and down the beach and level the sand. It performed beautifully. The villagers looked on with surprise as they saw the small tractor doing so much work in such a short time. It was easy for them to see how much the tractor will mean to the villages all along the beach area. Words cannot express our full appreciation to Tom Rich and Richard Stephens for the work they have put into the development of this tractor.”