STRAIGHT FROM THE BIG CITY

‘Because it’s there’
IKE SEÑERES

MANILA -- Mountaineers would often say that they climb a mountain “because it’s there,” which to me is a good enough explanation, having been a mountaineer myself. How I wish however that community development practitioners and advocates would also adopt this attitude when it comes to using appropriate technologies, “because it’s there”.

In a mountain community around the Antipolo area, villagers are now organizing themselves into a cooperative, so that they could get the resources needed to adopt integrated area development (IAD) strategies and approaches for their own good, which would include shelter, livelihood and biodiversity projects, among others.

In what is now emerging as a “core technology” for them, the villagers are going to build a centralized biogas chamber using human waste, so that they could produce methane gas for their own use. The idea to use human waste came after the villagers realized that they should no longer use piggery and poultry waste for this purpose, due to the potential of using another appropriate technology which I would explain later.

The biogas chamber will produce the cooking gas for them, which at the same time would also power a multi-purpose drier, a water filtration system and a cold storage facility. Hopefully, the gas would also power their refrigerators, as soon as we could revive this very practical and appropriate technology.

Given this very simple configuration, the villagers will already be able to save on their expenses for electricity, liquid petroleum gas (LPG), and bottled water, three basic needs that are bleeding their pockets dry. On the upside, they will instead fill their pockets with money coming from their poultry, piggery and forestry projects, including a number of agriculture related activities.

Using an organic farming method introduced by the Agro Amigo Movement, the villagers will be able to grow hogs and chickens in record time, while at the same time they are able to produce organic fertilizers on site from the animal wastes. This is the reason why they will no longer channel these wastes to the methane chamber.

Among other uses, they will apply the organic fertilizer to their cacao plantation, which is part of their bio-diverse reforestation project. Of course, the multi-purpose drier would also be used for their cacao crops.
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It is very ironic that in what is supposedly an agricultural country, we are importing most of our milk and dairy requirements. This problem is not unique by itself, because we are also not producing our own flour and therefore not our own bread too. To complete the breakfast fare, we are producing our own chicken eggs, but almost exclusively from feeds made from imported materials too.

Generally speaking, we could say that the lack of growth in our agriculture industry is probably due to the lack of support by the government to our farmers, but that is already a worn out reason by now. It would be fair to say that the government would probably try to support our farmers in the best way that it could, but if that is not enough, it is time for us to move on by relying on our own resources.

Fortunately for all of us, we now have a homegrown technology that would enable us to economically and profitably produce our own milk to produce dairy products, our own flour to produce bread, and our own materials to produce animal feeds. As an added bonus, it would also enable us to deal with the problem of methane in cow dung and other animal wastes, a problem that contributes to the destruction of the ozone layer.

I say economically, because the technology will enable our farmers to make their own feeds and fertilizers, thus enabling them to save on these very expensive farm inputs. I say profitably, because as they save on the costs of farm inputs, they also have the chance of making more money.

The technology works by way of enabling the animals to fully digest the protein in their diets, thus completely removing the methane contents of their wastes. The full digestion of the protein also enables the animals to grow to market size faster. In the case of chickens, full growth is at 32 days instead of 45, in the case of hogs it is 4 months instead of 6 months.

Since the protein is fully digested, the resulting animal wastes are practically composed of fiber only, and all that is needed to convert it to organic fertilizer is to dry it. As soon as it is dried, it is also suitable for use as aquatic feeds.

Be it for cattle to produce meat or dairy, or for chickens to produce meat or eggs, the technology now gives us the opportunity to grow these basic food items that we have been importing all along. Using the organic fertilizer, we can grow the wheat for the flour that we need.