USAID’s “IMPACTblog” features an interview with Jon Colton, a new Jefferson Science Fellow with USAID, who “will support the Feed the Future initiative’s work to scale up promising technologies that help smallholder farmers improve global food security.” Colton discusses how his background as a mechanical engineer and industrial designer has allowed him to work on “projects in the area of humanitarian design and engineering such as medical facilities, immunization equipment such as plastic hypodermic needles, cold chain equipment and facilities, farming tools, medical devices, bio-mass fueled stoves, and charcoal makers,” according to the blog. With Feed the Future, he is “investigating how mechanical technologies, such as seed drills, two-wheel tractors, drip irrigation, no-till farming, weeders, threshers, and winnowers, can be applied to the sustainable intensification of farming — producing more food on the same land and with less manual labor,” he said, the blog notes (10/23).