In Malawi biogas and compost can go hand in hand

As part of an Opportunity for Practice Change in May the Regional Centre for Africa (ILRI) organized two trainings in Malawi on integrated manure management. Each training lasted two days on which the second day was used for field work. The trainers came from ILRI and local government agencies. They used the zero-version of a training manual which is under development by the LMMC. This manual will also be used in other training, e.g. Ethiopia. Based on these experiences the manual will be up-graded and become available in the Manure Knowledge Kiosk later on. Small scale farms dominate the Malawian livestock sector, therefore on the second day the training focused on properly composting of manure and bio-slurry from family digesters.

The participants, mainly government and some non-government extension workers did an excellent job in training farmers on the second day. At the end of the training, they made action plans to be used for the subsequent follow up activities. Asked about what the most important thing was had learned one of the participants said “That farmers can use the manure for biogas and then later on still use the bio-slurry to fertilize their fields”. Another participant stated “We should always integrate livestock and crops in our daily farming”