This farmer uses garbage as nutrition for his farm!

Team Udayavani, Feb 10, 2019, 10:51 AM IST

Experimental cultivator Vinod Lasrado’s example

Sullia: This is the story of an experimental cultivator who has converted garbage which was considered as a burden for the city into nutrition for the plants in his farm and thus has also found a solution to the problem of garbage!

Vinod Lasrado of Jayanagar has started the attempt of using garbage as nutrients for his farm. This is like a lesson for the district administration which has spent lakhs of rupees trying to manage the garbage and yet remain helpless without any solution for the problem.

Garbage is collected from houses, commercial buildings on behalf of the municipality and then separated into dry and wet garbage. The wet garbage is transported to Lasrado’s farm. There, the garbage is transformed into nutrients for the plants through Aerobic Composting system.

The tank has been created using arecanut trees in a way to utilize the air and humidity. The garbage is added to it. A mixture of jiggery and waste decomposer is added to it. If the decomposer mixture is useful in breaking down the garbage, EM-1 is used fluid is sprayed to prevent foul smell and mosquito problem.

Nutrients in two months

The gearbage changes into nutrients in a span of 2 months. If cow dung is added to the garbage, the nutrients will be ready within 40 days itself, informs Vinod. Currently around 1 ton of garbage is added to the tank. The tank is filled within a month. 1 ton of garbage produces 6 quintal nutrients. The expemse for its management is around Rs 1200. Even then it is possible to sell 1 kg of nutrients at the rate of Rs 2, explains Mr Lasrado.

Garbage management

As per the 2011 census, there are 19,500 people living in Sullia. According to the present calculations, there is a population of at least 25,000. There are more than 4,500 houses and 3,500 commercial buildings. Since the last 18 years, there has been a facility to collect garbage using two mini tippers daily. The daily collection of garbage exceeds 3 tons.  For this the district administration is spending 1.5 lakh per month. A garbage dumping yard is being created at a distance of 8 kms at Kalchapse. Since the yard is overflowing, the garbage is being dumped in front of the shed after its segregation.

Article by Kiran Prasad Kundadadka translated into English by Aaron Dmello