BOGRA, Bangladesh — The cornstalks growing in Anzu Rani and Biren
Mahato’s rented field are vibrant green. The leaves intermingle and
the strong stalks fill the field.
“The corn looks great,” said Mokhlesur Rahman, administrator of
Mennonite Central Committee’s (MCC) Research and Extension Activity
Partners in Bogra. “I’ve hardly seen corn that good in Bangladesh.”
Rahman is especially pleased with the results because the Mahato
family is benefiting from an MCC project that shows farmers how to
produce their own compost, which increases soil health and crop yield.
Farmers don’t need to buy as much chemical fertilizer when they use
compost, so they save on production costs even as they earn more on
their crops.
Worms Work for MCC and Bengali Farmers
by Linda Espenshade, MCC news coordinator.
BOGRA, Bangladesh — The cornstalks growing in Anzu Rani and Biren
Mahato’s rented field are vibrant green. The leaves intermingle and
the strong stalks fill the field.
“The corn looks great,” said Mokhlesur Rahman, administrator of
Mennonite Central Committee’s (MCC) Research and Extension Activity
Partners in Bogra. “I’ve hardly seen corn that good in Bangladesh.”
Rahman is especially pleased with the results because the Mahato
family is benefiting from an MCC project that shows farmers how to
produce their own compost, which increases soil health and crop yield.
Farmers don’t need to buy as much chemical fertilizer when they use
compost, so they save on production costs even as they earn more on
their crops.
Anzu Rani, who surveys the crop with her son, Choton Mahato, on her
hip, is pleased too. Without using compost, one-third acre of land
typically yields about 20 mounds (one mound is 40 kg or slightly less
than two bushels) of corn. By combining the compost with a reduced
amount of fertilizer, she anticipates harvesting 30 to 40 mounds of
corn. In addition, she said, insect infestation has lessened, and she
believes the compost will lengthen the use of the land.
The Mahatos are using trichocompost, named after trichoderma, the
beneficial fungus in the manure mixture. MCC also supports the
production of vermicompost, made by worms — red wigglers — that
effectively turn cow manure into compost.
To encourage both kinds of composting, MCC works with Bengali partner
organizations, whose mission is to support small farmers.
“Ag is our historical expertise,” said Phillip Birkey, MCC socio-
economic researcher from Bunker Hill, Ind. “By helping them help the
farmers it’s a mutually beneficial thing to them and the farmers.”
In 2008, MCC introduced vermicomposting to its partner, Grameen
Krishok Sohayak Sangstha (GKSS), which means Rural Farmer Assistance
Organization. The two organizations worked together to test the worm
composting idea with eight farmers who own less than one acre of land.
Each farmer was given at least one 12-inch high cement ring, readily
available in Bangladesh as sewage pipes, and about 500 worms that
would eat their way through the cow manure inside the circle in about
40 to 45 days. The worm excrement, combined with the worms that die,
creates a concentrated compost that adds micro- and macronutrients to
the topsoil.
“They (the farmers) found that the application of compost in the soil
along with chemical fertilizer got better results than chemical
fertilizer alone,” said Mohammed Akter Hossain, an MCC supervisor who
works with GKSS. In Bangladesh, Hossain said, topsoil has less than 1
percent of organic matter in its soil, but for good production, soil
needs at least 5 percent. Compost adds that organic matter.
The positive results encouraged GKSS to extend this information to
more farmers. Over the next several years, MCC helped GKSS to make
connections with governmental financing and technical support so that
GKSS now has 1,500 cement rings, producing 35 to 40 tons of compost
per month, both vermicomposting and trichoderma.
Many of those compost rings are tended by local farmers. GKSS buys the
compost from the farmers for local prices and then resells it to
larger markets. The organization, which used to have eight employees,
now employs 82 people at a living wage.
Although vermicomposting is relatively inexpensive and simple to
implement on a farm level, trichocomposting has, until recently,
required access to a laboratory where the helpful fungus is processed.
MCC, however, has discovered that trichocompost — which includes cow and chicken manure, sawdust, corn powder, molasses, ash and water hyacinth treated with trichoderma — produces a leachate (runoff) that has the fungus in it. That leachate can be used repeatedly to turn a new mixture of manure into compost, making it possible for the ordinary farmer to produce her or his own trichocompost.
MCC is the first organization in Bangladesh to find and use this
information to benefit individual farmers, Rahman said. He is pleased
with this development because trichocompost has the added value, over
vermicompost, of being a pesticide. It also works against bacterial
wilt and soil-borne fungal diseases and adds calcium and magnesium to
the soil, which strengthen the cell structure of the plant.
“Everybody notices the health of the plants,” said Dipali Mahato, a
farmer from Beragir, who used trichocompost on her potato crop. Her
crop yield increased from six mounds of potatoes to 10 mounds when she
used the trichocompost. The yield might have been a bit higher if the
neighbors hadn’t stolen some potatoes because the plants looked so
healthy and the potatoes taste so good, she said.