São Paulo – A lorry offloading eucalyptus bark, coffee grounds, ashes and bird droppings, at the Pluma Visafértil factory, in the city of Mogi Mirim, in the interior of São Paulo, is a common scene. What elsewhere would become garbage, there gains value, as raw material. The company is one of the new projects in the current national movement for organic and alternative fertilizers. It was born in the 1990s and, ever since, as is the case with several others in Brazil, has been developing its ant’s work to enrich the soil of the country with remains – residues. Pluma Visafértil produces fertilizers from organic raw material.
According to figures supplied by the Association of Organic Fertilizer Industries (Abisolo), Brazil already produces 4.5 million tonnes of organic and organomineral fertilizers a year. If soil conditioners and substrate for plants are added, products in the same family, the volume reaches 5.2 million tonnes.
The most common raw material is tree bark, according to Abisolo agronomist Suzana Gazire. But the list of organic fertilizers used in Brazil is long and includes from turf, charcoal, sawdust and residues from the lumber industry to manure, horse and poultry bedding, sand, expanded clay, coconut fibre, vinasse, castor pie and residues from slaughterhouses, among others.
"Around 65% of the companies operating in the sector inaugurated their activities in the mid 1990s,” said Suzana. That was the case with Visafértil. An initiative of an environmentally concerned philosopher, Ulisses Girardi, the company is one of those that work for the image of organic manures not to be damaged by the inadequate and environmentally incorrect use of natural inputs. “We buy the raw material according to specific standards,” explained the agronomist at the company, Alexandra Luppi Guedes.
Alexandra explained that each input is fermented individually until it reaches its ideal point. Residues are then fermented together, in a natural manner. They are not mixed in with mineral products. The raw material is sought in the region, at a maximum distance of 100 kilometres, so that the transportation cost may be viable, as the volume of material is large, explained the agronomist. The product is geared at vegetable gardens, fruit farms, maize crops and pastures.
*Translated by Mark Ament
