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Organic farming with slurry As bi-product of biogas plant, the digested slurry has proven to be the best fertilizer for farms in rural areas but a lot needs to be done to promote its use at a mass scale. MAHOTTARI—Bharat Bhujel walks on his farm in Patu village of Gauribas VDC, Mahottari district, to observe his crops. “I’m glad I used the slurry, as the production is better this year,” says Bhujel, explaining how the digested slurry, discharged from his biogas plant, had proved to be far more effective than the chemical fertilizers he constantly used in the past. Many farmers like Bhujel have already felt
the difference made by bio-slurry in fertilizing their farms and
they have already stopped or reduced the use of chemical fertilizers
like Urea, Diammonium Phosphate (DAP) and Potash. In a country where
there are nearly 172,858 biogas plants in 67 districts, bio-slurry
could create waves as organic fertilizer and has potential to help
boost Nepal’s agricultural production. In average, a single household biogas plant can produce about 10 metric tonnes of slurry every year, according to Biogas Sector Partnership-Nepal (BSP-Nepal), which implements the national Biogas Support Programme (BSP) funded by Dutch, German and Nepal governments through Dutch developmenet organisation SNV-Nepal, German bank Kreditanstalt fur Wiedeeraufbau (KfW) and Alternative Energy Promotion Centre (AEPC). There are today around 172,505 biogas plants in 67 districts of the country and are already producing nearly 1.7 million tonnes of bio slurry. The same slurry could also be used to produce high quality compost, according to BSP-Nepal’s report, “Promotion and trade of Bio-Slurry and Bio-Compost for Organic Products,” prepared by Lotus Intellect Pvt. Ltd.. BSP has been actively helping to educate the biogas users about the importance and high value of the slurry in their farm production. Due to support from BSP, today nearly 85 percent of the bio-slurry are being utilized as an organic compost fertilizer.
However, the biogas users are not letting the slurry go waste and are using it in compost form. “We’re helping the biogas users with our suggestions on how to retain the nutrients by composting the slurry with mixture of dry organic materials,” says Saroj Rai, executive director of BSP-Nepal. He explained that one part of slurry will be quite sufficient to compost about four parts of the plant materials. Nearly 60 percent of the biogas users are using the slurry in compost form and very few are utilizing in liquid form, according to Biogas Users’ Survey. In a country, where most of the farmers are poor and are unable to afford enough chemical fertilizers, they could gain a lot if the slurry is commercialized and managed well. In addition, the farmers in remote villages often have to bear travel expenses as they have to make visits to the urban centres and towns to buy chemical fertilizers, available at subsidized rates. It has also been proven by agriculture experts that bio-slurry helps to improve soil quality and fertility and enhance agricultural production. On the other hand, chemical fertilizer could contaminate the farm soil if used continually. It is estimated that Nepal imports nearly 41,000 tonnes of chemical fertilizers every year. “More education and awareness programmes about bioslurry are needed to help farmers realize the vast difference between slurry and chemical fertilizers,” says Dhruba Kumar Bista, biogas user and farmer in Gauribas VDC, where nearly almost all of 45 households now own biogas plants due to help from BSP and local biogas company, Kantipur Gobar Gas. Bista collects digested bioslurry from his plant four times a week and stores them near his house and uses them for his farms, which are located very close to his house. “Last year, I managed to grow nearly 400 kg of crops, which has doubled compared in the past when I used the chemical fertilizers,” explains Bista. He claims that since he started using slurry as fertilizer, it has even helped to fertilizer the infertile farms covered with rocks and sand. He now produces about 80 baskets of maize in his small part of his farm, which he had considered to be useless for farming. Today, Bista not only has improved farm production but also has managed to save a lot of expenses due to the slurry. He used to buy nearly 120 kg of Urea in addition to DAP and other chemical fertilisers every year and spent over Rs 10,000 on all them. Today, all he needs is his effort to carry the slurry available for free and can use any amount to last for a year. “Let’s hope that this slurry can be turned into a commercial product so that we farmers can also start trading our slurry in the market at a national scale,” says Bista. ---xxx--- |
Success
Stories
But
despite all the efforts, most of the biogas users have failed to
make maximum use of the slurry due to several reasons. Among the
main reasons were that the latrines were connected to most of the
plants and hence had bad smell and discouraged users to handle slurry
produced from latrine attached plants. So, the farmers usually dry
up the slurry as it causes them difficulty to carry the wet form
of slurry all the way to the farms. While in liquid form, the slurry
has high contents of nutrients composed of inorganic compounds like
Phosphorous, Nitrogen and Potassium. But once the slurry is dried,
the nutrient value reduces.
