The designing team of Harvest Hand from Beijing Institute of Technology

A portable hand-held cotton picker designed to meet the needs of cotton harvesting in West Africa has won a top prize at the 5th Goldreed Industrial Design Award.

"Harvest Hand", devised by a team from the OPEN Design Lab of the School of Design and Art at Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) led by teacher Sun Bowen, excelled among 7,106 entries and won the Future Star Award at the ceremony in Xiong'an New Area, Hebei province.

Since its launch in 2019, the Goldreed Industrial Design Award has received a total of 35,318 design entries from more than 80 countries and regions worldwide. The entries have helped to both enhance the new quality productive forces of Chinese design and promote Chinese design on a global scale.

Harvest Hand is a low-cost, wearable integrated device designed for cotton picking in West Africa, which can be made available for mass use.

Agriculture is currently the backbone industry in many African countries. In Benin, cotton is a primary economic source, constituting the main means of employment for approximately 50 percent of the country’s population. Cotton picking in Benin is done both by hand and machine. Manual picking can be dangerous for workers and is considered inefficient, while mechanical picking has a high cost.

Harvest Hand is designed to significantly reduce operating costs, enhance picking efficiency and improve working conditions, while providing inspiration for the further modernization of agriculture in Africa.

In recent years, the OPEN Design Lab at BIT has won 46 international awards for its social innovative design work, including the German Red Dot Award, the Paris Design Award, the Italian A' Design Award and the James Dyson Award.

Harvest Hand was designed to meet the specific needs of agriculture in West Africa. Taking "Design + Agriculture" as a starting point, the team at BIT is committed to meeting the cotton picking needs of local farmers through low-cost and innovative designs, directly benefitting the farmers.