For the past year, up to four tonnes of vegetable waste from Tiruchi’s Gandhi Market is being diligently converted into organic manure in the nearby village of Mullipatti.
D.J. Agros, the company that celebrated its first anniversary on Saturday, is the brainchild of Janet Rajeshwari, a computer science graduate who decided to switch fields after laptops and smart phones began to steal a march over the internet browsing and computer centres she was running in Tiruchi.
Already familiar with small-scale vermicompost yard at her family’s field in Lalgudi, Ms. Rajeshwari was helped by Tiruchi-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) Women Involved in Sanitation and Hygiene (WISH) to get started on this unusual business opportunity. She took preliminary training from N. Gopalakrishnan, an organic farmer based at Panickampatti village.
“I was advised to start small,” she told The Hindu . “So we got permission from the corporation to collect one tonne of vegetable waste — fruits, vegetables, food scraps, and paper — from the Gandhi Market every day.” This has increased steadily to four tonnes over the past few months.
Once the waste is brought to the one-acre Mullipatti premises, the non-biodegradable material (metal and plastics) is manually segregated by five workers, a process that can take up to a day. The bio-degradable waste is first allowed to decompose in open sunlight. Mixed with cow dung, and slightly moist, the ‘pre-compost’ is then heaped up in rows in covered sheds, when African Night Crawler earthworms (eudrilus eugeniae) get to work. The top layer of excreta/humus left by the burrowing worms is removed and sieved before being packed.
The company produces 10 tonnes of organic manure in a month, which is sold in places like Chennai, Dindigul, and Bangalore.Compost is considered more nutrient-rich and soil-friendly than chemical fertilizers. Its ability to retain water cuts down on irrigation cost by almost half as compared to modern farming methods. But despite these benefits, “farmers are reluctant to replace chemical fertilizers with organic manure, because they think the chemicals give more ‘beautiful’ produce,” said Ms. Rajeshwari. “Maybe they are more beautiful, but organic fruits and vegetables are definitely tastier,” she added.
The paucity of vermicompost is one of the reasons for the high cost of organic fruits and vegetables, said Dreena Xavier, a graduate in micro-systems from Germany and Mr. Rajeshwari’s niece who has been assisting her aunt in the project since its founding.
Asked if computers could in some way enter this process, she said, “we could use technology to segregate the waste material, and perhaps automate the packing process, but all this needs finance. We want to progress in small stages.”
S. Martin, Advocate, Bar Council, Tiruchi, educational consultant Lorette Gomez, A. Balasundaram of Nalam Trust, and M. Subburaman of Society for Community Organisation and People’s Education were among the special invitees at the anniversary function.