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Commenced:
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01/09/2006 |
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Submitted:
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10/04/2012 |
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Last updated:
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07/10/2015 |
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Location:
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Astra Farms, Tabuk, Tabuk Province, SA |
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Phone:
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966 1 477 1488 |
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Climate zone:
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Arid |
Working for one of the largest farms in Saudi Arabia, the client brief was to help manage multiple waste streams to be used for specialist composting. Included in the brief were to introduce any methodologies that would assist the farm to become more sustainable, build soil vitality, reduce water use, establish organic production and use waste as resource for making specialist compost.
Geoff and Nadia Lawton introduced me to the project in 2005 and we worked on the project over a 3-year period, I worked with farm management to establish a composting facility using a ‘Windrow’ composting model capable of processing 30,000 tonnes of compostable waste per year. The compost was used for broad acre cropping, as a greenhouse-growing medium and reduced reliance on expensive imported peat moss in the greenhouse propagation potting mix.
Paul Taylor and Geoff Lawton ready to meet the client
The methodologies followed the Bio Vital™ system as developed by Paul Taylor from Trust Nature Pty Ltd. These included specialist composting which contained a high diversity of beneficial soil microorganisms as well as containing all the benefits expected from high quality compost. The ‘Bio-Vital™’ difference is that we are using compost as medium for growing a high diversity of beneficial soil organisms that are responsible for many sustainable benefits including reducing irrigation and building long-term soil fertility.
Key to the success of the project was making bulk quantities of Soil Pro-biotic on site, used to establish ‘nutrient cycling’, inoculate soils, reduce plant and soil disease and add microbial diversity to the composting system.
Making Soil Pro-biotic (specialist ‘compost tea’)
As a result of our work there, the farm has been able to deal with ongoing nematode issues in the greenhouses; responsibly manage waste converting multiple waste streams into valuable Bio Vital™ compost; reduce dependence on imported peat moss from Norway by incorporating compost and Soil Pro-biotic into the propagating system; reduce dependence on chemical fertilisers and reduce dependence on fossil aquifer water.
The system helped to close the loop with nutrient management, returning waste as resource back into the system as vital compost, much of this waste would have been buried or burned adding to the toxic load of the planet. This is a true example of “turning multiple problems into multiple solutions”.
Bio-Vital compost and soil pro-biotic was essential for maintaining greenhouse production.
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