Summary: The Integrated Food and Waste Management System (IF&WMS) was developed by Prof George Chan of the Zero Emissions and Research Initiatives (ZERI). It is a bio-intensive agricultural system that has eliminated many of those inputs. Numerous IF&WMS projects have been deployed around the world including Mauritius and Namibia in Africa.
The IF&WMS makes the most of the five main kingdoms in order to work in harmony with nature. The IF&WMS functions as an "organic engine" that combines industrial technologies with ecological principles and understandings. It takes in organic waste materials (that would otherwise be regarded as trash) and recycles those materials into value added products. IF&WMS combine livestock, aquaculture, agriculture and agro-industry in an expanded symbiotic or synergistic system, so that the wastes of one process become the input for other processes. These processes, Augmented by synergistic and symbiotic biological and/or biochemical treatment and interactions, provide the means of production such as energy, fertilizer, and feed for optimum productivity at minimum costs.
The major benefit of the system is that it is design to use many sources of free and abundant resources available in nature (carbon dioxide, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sun, light, water, fauna. flora, and billions of bacteria) to replace the means of production that are utilized in the various processes, for renewable as well as sustainable development and ecological equilibrium or balance. Bacterial actions are capitalized to their maximum by ingenious, effective and efficient designs.
Fish can be eaten, algae can be used as feed, worms from the vermi-culture gin can fed to the fish and fast growing plants like Napier grass can be added which is fowl are added to the pond ecosystem. Excess water in the pond percolates into the surrounding berms providing both irrigation and fertilizer for the crops growing on the berms. Finally aquaponic greenhouses can be added to this system.
What is the Problem? Existing development models in addition to being resource intensive are also expensive, particularly for resource poor regions of the world. The high ecological, social and economic costs of the conventional technologies makes a comprehensive approach to development and modernization that addresses poverty and underdevelopment unrealistic. Global economics continues to crush smallholders who barely eke out an existence at the lower levels of society while corporate middlemen profit handsomely. Solutions tend to focus on a piece meal approach to solving problems that tends to fixate on symptoms rather than root causes.
The rise of unintended consequences of modernization, has led to what are called World Urgent Issues.
Global warming is a threat to our way of life. As temperatures rise, species become dislocated, storm and drought intensity increase and sea levels rise.
Agricultural practices continue to be promoted by the so called development community that rely on ecologically destructive activities that promote excessive use of artificial fertilizers, toxic pesticides, fossil fuel burning machinery and genetically modified organisms.
Construction and infrastructure costs continue to spiral making well thought out development particularly difficult in emerging markets.
One Possible Solution: Prof George Chan developed a variant of Integrated Farming that was has had many names over the years. These include Integrated Farming System (IFS), Integrated Biomass System (IBS), and more recently Integrated Farming & Waste Management System (IF&WMS). Chan worked with an organization started by Gunter Pauli of Zero Emissions and Research Initiatives (ZERI). At the peak of this system's development in the late 90s they were involved with many UN affiliated multi-lateral international groups such as UNESCAP (Bangkok), UNU (Tokyo), UNDP (Geneva), UNEP, USEPA, USDOE, SPC, UPNG and China Academia Sinica.
Rationale: Chan made the point of pointing out that as a rule of thumb, most of what is eaten by animals is undigested. 15-20% of what we eat is converted into energy and nutrients. The rest ends up as excrement. Much effort has been made to deal with human waste for health and economic reasons but this as been seen as a cost not as part of a productive value creating economy. Dr Mae Wan Ho states in her research that over 30 percent of the world's Greenhouse Gas emissions can be attributed to food growing, production and distribution. IF&WMS can be designed to create valued added products from organic waste that would otherwise become pollutants posing health issues for both humans and ecosystems.
Comprehensive approaches are needed to address the challenges of contemporary society in both developed and developing regions of the world. Such approaches can if executed properly effectively turn problems into solutions and provide multiple and multi-sectorial benefits – such as for example creating power generation through the recycling of bio-waste, which can then be applied as a nutrient rich feed or fertilizer. With the effective use of modern communiciations and organizational methodologies these multi-sectorial or integrated approaches can potentially be developed into best practices that can be rapidly scaled throughout a region to become common practices.
Description of Process and Concept: IF&WMS is a bio-intensive agricultural system that functions as an "organic engine" combining industrial technologies with ecological principles and understandings of how organism's collaboration with an ecosystem symbiotically. An IF&WMS takes in organic waste materials (that would otherwise be regarded as trash) and recycles those materials into valuable farm commodities. This eliminates many inputs/costs typically associated with agricultural production as way to reduce costs and improve sustainability. A higher level of productive sophistication can produce value added products. This system by reducing costs and eliminating many inputs typically associated with agricultural production has the potential to empower smallholder farmers. The IF&WMS utilizes anaerobic digesters to turn waste into three main fractions each of which can be used for a different potentiallly synergistic purpose:
30% biogas which can be used to for heating the reactor in cold climates, for electricity, hot water, habitat heat and cooking
35% liquid effluent for processing through the secondary waste treatment system transferred into algae biomass and then suitable as feed for the firsh in the fishpinds and then as fertilized irrigation water through a process of fertigation that is completed within the fish pond.
35% Bio-soldis/sludge - sludge can be sanitized using a portion of biogas to heat the sludge to a certain temperature and then the sequential processing by worms and then mushrooms to create a fully dialed in soil food web in the finished compost produced.
Anaerobic Digesters Produce Biogas (Primary Effluents Treatment) - The digester or reactor is the heart of the IF&WMS. Waste biomass in the form of legumes, cereals and grains are processed primarily through the animal's digestive tract. Exiting their posterior in an extruded mush is what we commonly call manure. This nutrient rich resource is then collected cleaned off the concrete slab by way of a system of pressurized water into vats for storage. It then goes through a special USAB digester that requires no pumps and is fed only by gravity. What is unique about USAB digester is that as it cultivates the growth of methane gas producing bacteria, it act as a filter. Its actually the bacteria themselves that form a mat or colony that actually acts as the filter itself. Because of course its in the interest of the colony to collect all the nutrient rich effluent it can but then release the solids once the nutrients the bacteria needs have been extracted. The reactor is about 90 percent efficient in reducing Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD). This parallels the reduction in biosolids in the effluent which is standard in the primary stage of effluent treatment using anaerobic digestion - about 90 percent. Biogas is collected into bladder type bags. These bladders fill up using pressure that naturally results from the biochemical interactions facilitated by the anaerobic microbial actions taking place inside the reactor.
Setting, Aerobic and UV tanks (Secondary Treatment) - The remaining 10 percent is a feed for microbial organisms such as algae that in turn become food for the fish living in the adjacent fish pond.
Integrated Farm Projects:
Montfort Boys Town - FIVE healthy new enterprises were created in 1996 by simply gathering the waste generated by a local brewery. These new revenue streams provide food, jobs and energy and give students valuable experience with leading edge farming practices, while providing a new model for their country's fragile economy.
Beer: Making Bread And Mushrooms ZERI assists projects in Namibia and Canada to effectively uses waste from breweries to produce energy while producing products such as baked goods, mushrooms and feed for livestock and poultry.
Longju Sustainable village - Proposal to develop a integrated farming system for a rural Chinese village.
Songhai Farm - With help from ZERI this project in Benin was able to create an ecotourism experience while creating products from a variety of wastes employing 300 people.
Location and Logistical Considerations: For small scale and pilot demonstration projects location is not so much an issue. For medium to large scale production, iIF&WMS should be within proximity of major highways for transport. For larger scale production including power generation from biogas consideration of location of major power lines with excess load capacity and close to the facilities that produce the excess waste biomass/biosolids. Prime locations for pilot plants would not be in rural areas or transition suburban environments but in run down urban areas where land prices are relatively low, and where products and byproducts (such as farm waste and food scraps from processing food for example) can be readily exchanged with community supported agriculture programs, farmers markets, coops and health foods stores.
Vision & Long Term Goal: The Songhai Farm in Benin is an example of a integrated whole systems approach to development that could lead to creation of ecovillages based on IF&WMS/ZERI methodology. A larger and more long term goal would be to build on what are already projects, highly efficient in the use of natural and human resources to promote the manifestation of socially just and sustainable societies throughout the globe as part of standard development practice. We could imagine a terraforming process of surrounding urban areas that could enable more productive and sustainable use of semi-urban and peri-urban lands.
Synergistic System Benefits & Variations on the Theme: As a holistically designed system there are many possible options for ecological designers and bio-engineers. From the three waste fractions/streams mentioned above, a multitude of potentially synergistically interactions can be developed. The IF&WMS can be modified in a variety of ways depending on local conditions, market demand and farmer preferences to produce value-added products such as: mushrooms, algae, feeds, compost, fish, crops, fruit trees, etc.
Biogas can be used to heat digester tanks in cold months as well as to provide heat for cooking, hot water, habitat heating and electricity. In more advanced systems, biogas can fuel Combined heating and power (CHP) to enable district heating/hot water system complementing the solar hot water systems, and the geothermal system.
Farm fish in the ponds without having to buy artificial feeds for them. Fish can be eaten or be ground in meal for pigs and other animals
Algae can be used as feed for many animals and primarily the fish
Worms from the vermi-culture gin can be fed to the fish and mushrooms can be eaten by humans as a potential crop
Fast growing plants like Napier grass can be added as a potential feed for fowl, if they are added to the pond ecosystem.
Excess water in the pond percolates into the surrounding berms providing both irrigation and fertilizer for the crops growing on the berms.
Greenhouse Production - Growing foods in high efficiency hydroponic greenhouses. These greenhouses would allow the experimentation with Hydroponic technologies using processed compost effluent from the methane bioreactors as a nutritional supplement for the Hydroponic system.
Integrated Farm Greenhouse System; Greenhouse Gas Sequestration - Exhaust from CHP can be used to create greenhouse enriched environment that increases plant growth. In this way a project using this technology can actually produce power, while reducing CO2 emissions (because the digestion of methane in the digester actually prevents methane from being released into the atmosphere methane as a greenhouse gas is several times more potent than CO2).
Target Groups/Regions/Markets: IF&WMS works best under wet tropical conditions, as most of the processes need water, warmth, sun, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, flora, fauna, and bacteria which are in abundance and free of charge all the time in to produce our basic foods and essential goods.
The target application area developing regions but the more generalized Integrated Farming approach can be applied anywhere there is an ecosystem that can be modeled to create a Human Augmented BioSystem. One example of a potential region for this approach is Lake Victoria in Africa. There are water problems on Lake Victoria, the water in the lake is filling with sediment and organic matter. The result is that water hyacinth are finding a rich environment for growth. While local people see this as problem, this is a potentially a highly nutritional food source for an integrated biomass system.
Sustainability, Security and Social Preservation - These projects by providing agricultural and nutritional security as well as business opportunities help to increase community self-confidence eliminating fears about starvation, malnutrition and famine. Not only is food security no longer an issue in these systems but their design by its multi-use function and cascading feedback loops allows for a much higher level of productivity which translates into more time to do the things we want to do live and me time growing and processing food and dealing with waste.
EcoVillage & EcoTourism Development Possibilities: Integrated Farming Systems enable the development of a variety of (some of which are value-added) products and services:
Fertilizer/Composting Business (from processed, sanitized and dewatered sludge)
Crops (such as fish, pork, chickens, mushrooms, vegetables, algae and fruit)
Carbon and Methane sequestration services
Ecotourism including tours, restaurant/bakery and bed and breakfast
Valued added agricultural products (such as mango salsa and vinegar, dairy products, palm oil, soap, etc.)
Education and training (to promote sustainable development and replicate IF&WMS projects)
Business development services (to establish Integrated Farming and other sustainable business ventures based on ZERI concepts and methodology
ZERI Related Links:
Ocean Arks InternationalIF&WMS Relevant Articles:
Proposal & Report on Integrated Farming in the UK to UK Parliament by Dr Mae Wan Ho
Phyco.org - offers a wiki to promote bio-based fuel source focusing on practical, inexpensive and decentralized methods of creating alternative fuels including exploring algae as a method of creating alternative fuels.
5 Kingdoms of Nature is the framework for ZERI ecological design process. It was inspired by the work of Prof. Dr. Lynn Margulis in her milestone reference work "The 5 Kingdoms of Nature." Each kingdom has its place. The waste of one species is food for another.ZERI Training
Masters of Systems Design - ZERI has partnered with Politecnico di Torino] in Italy to offer a 2-year course that will teach students about how to apply ZERI approach and methodology on a practical level to promote sustainable development.