Tanzanian farmers devise ways to check harmful smog

MOROGORO, Tanzania

Tanzanian farmers, who every year contributed to harmful smog in winters by burning rice husk and straws have found their alternative usage.

Farmers in Morogoro region are not only using rice husk as fuel instead of wood and charcoal to stop deforestation and reduce carbon footprints, but they are also converting it into organic fertilizer. Perched on the rolling hills, the region is a bustling rice hub of Tanzania.

“Rice husk does not emit bad smoke. I have used it for now to cook food and it is cheaper than charcoal,” said Hadija Kasembe, a resident of Kiroka in Morogoro.

Tanzania produces more than 3.2 million metric tons of rice husks every year.

To get rid of it, farmers used to burn the rice husk and straws to clear the farm for another crop, which was causing immense smoke and when mixed with fog would create smog leading to breathing issues in the region.

For every five tons of rice harvested, one ton of husks -- small cases around edible kernels of rice is produced.

Until recently, it was discarded or fed to animals as farmers did not see any commercial value in it.

The government has also introduced special rice-husk stoves which generate sufficient heat to cook food, but less smoke.

“My family no longer throw away paddy residues. I know they’re valuable,” said Kasembe

Although Tanzania has 33 million hectares (81.5 million acres) of forests, the country has been losing more than 400,000 hectares (988,421 acres) of forest annually for the past two decades, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Global Forests Resources Assessment.

Using special ovens, the farmers have been trained by experts from the Sokoine University of Agriculture to carbonize the rice-husk wastes, which are then pressed into briquettes for cooking.

Improves fertility

“We want to show families and institutions that the use of husks for cooking instead of charcoal or firewood is the way to go to protect the environment," said Charles Kilawe a researcher from the department of ecosystems and conservation at Sokoine University of Agriculture.

He said that the rice husk ash can be put back into the soil to improve its fertility.

Before she discovered that rice husks can be used to improve soil nutrients and increase crop yields, Madalena Athanas, a farmer in Kiroka village hardly got five or eight bags of rice per acre.

“I have learned a new method which I find more effective. I simply mix the rice wastes with soil and disperse in the farm” said the 61-year-old woman who was able to increase her yield.

Another farmer Zaituni Kailima said that she used to burn piles of rice straws on her farm to get rid of it.

“I honestly didn’t know if these residues could be put to better use,” she told the Anadolu Agency.

"Rice husks have many uses and can be processed into bio-fertilizers and added to soil on the recommendation of scientists to improve soil aeration,” said Kilawe.

According to him, husks with their rich contents of potassium and silicon helps to change the soil, improve its properties by reducing soil bulk density, improve its fertility with the air pockets created underground, and work as a rice conditioner, he said.