Tanzanian Farmers Adopt Bioagtive Emissions Technology For Fertilizer Production

VENTURES AFRICA- Farmers in Arusha, Tanzania, are getting ahead of some farmers on the continent as they plan to employ the use of a special technology that will help turn harmful farming machinery smoke into soil fertilizer.
The special technology- Bioagtive Emissions Technology- has already been used in Canada and a selected part of America.

According to the inventor of the technology, Gray Lewis, “The technology is yet to find its way to European countries which means, Arusha farmers will be ahead of their European counterparts in employing the new farming technology.”
Speaking on the operation of the technology, Gray explained that instead of letting out exhaust fumes and smokes from tractors and other farm machinery where they are going to be destructive; the fumes will be tapped and channelled into the soil where the fumes become fertilizers.
The Bio-Agtive method involves cooling the tractor exhaust emissions then injecting the condensed gas into the air cart or directly into the soil while sowing or cultivating.
When seeding with Bio-Agtive Emissions Technology (BAET), the cooled exhaust emissions are directed first into the air cart. It exposes the seed to humidity and oxidized elements from the emissions.
“We target at helping farmers to understand and practice a new way of Nitrogen and Carbon cycle management,” said Mr Lewis shortly after conducting a special training on the new technology to farmers from Arusha, Simanjiro, Hanang, Kiteto and Karatu areas.
“We are starting with large scale farmers who run heavier farm machinery but we are also working to come up with special systems that can be installed to smaller tractors and farm machines such as ‘power tillers’ for small scale farmers,” said Lewis.
He advised farmers in East Africa to capture more sunlight energy on their farms as Bio-Agtive adds the captured carbon energy into the soil where it helps to grow roots.
Field results from the past 10 years combined with the latest university research shows recycling tractor emissions and incorporating them into the soil provides a number of benefits. With more and more positive data surrounding the Bio-Agtive method, farmers and contractors with high horsepower tractors have many good reasons to take advantage of what is now a wasted resource.
Lewis says food security and climate change are some of the biggest issues facing governments and societies in both Tanzania and other continent. He says using the Bio-Agtive method, food production can go beyond carbon neutral to a point where healthy soils can be used to sequester carbon.