Baywater Engineering Pte Ltd is entering the industry of agriculture to provide an affordable yet organic alternative to chemical fertilisers.
According to company director Robert Hay, their flagship product OrganicPlus BioActive Liquid Compost contained over 1 billion microbes per millilitre.
He said it was formulated to improve soil and plant health, increase disease resistance, and improve quality of yield for fruits, vegetables and root crops including yaqona. The company was giving away three tonnes of their flagship product for free tomorrow in Navua Town.
Mr Hay urged everyone to bring their own bottles and drums and they would fill it for free.
“We’ll also give them a brochure that explains the product and like why it is effective,” he said.
“It also explains how to use it giving also common examples of dilution rates.
“I’m giving it for free because we understand that as chemical fertilizers and NPKs getting expensive, it’s getting difficult for farmers to take on the risk of using a new product, especially if it doesn’t work.
“So we were very confident in our product and it works because we’ve done a lot of testing, we want to eliminate that risk.
“And we feel like it’s the easiest way to reach farmers is if we can eliminate the risk of them trying it for free.”
Mr Hay said the idea started about two years ago.
“One of my father’s friends has a distillery and he was trying to find ways to utilize the distillery waste.
“And we started about doing some research as to how to treat it before we can put it into the dump.
“And that’s when we came across some studies from India that said that it’s actually great as an input for farming, as an agri-input.”
He said for the past two years they had been developing how to incorporate this distillery waste into agricultural inputs.
“And so that’s where we’ve come up with the idea to use aerobic digestion process in a bioreactor to put in distillery waste as well as chicken manure that also goes to the dump in any organic food waste, that usually end up in the dump, we put it in and transform it into a liquid compost concentrate.
“So we make organic liquid compost and we’re also working on fertilizers and pesticides in the future.”
Mr Hay added they mainly wanted to focus on farmers in highland regions and in the outer islands because those were the more difficult areas to get to in terms of agricultural inputs.
“But we’re also certainly available for commercial farmers and large commercial farmers.
“We’ve noted that some people are interested in using it in Taveuni because of the certain makeup of our product.
“It has a lot of phosphorus, which is what’s apparently needed in Taveuni but the nature of our product is compost.”
He said feedback from a lot of their test farmers in regards to their product had been great.
“For example, we’ve had one nursery who has thrown out all of his fertilizers, and he’s just using our product.
“We also have test farmers using on vegetables and root crops.
“And they’re saying that they’ve got a 60 per cent reduction in the use of chemical pesticides, as well as they’re saving hundreds of dollars on NPK chemical fertilisers.”
He said they would definitely like to make it one step closer or easier for people to get into organic farming.
“One of the biggest problems with organic farming in Fiji is the lack of accessible and affordable, organic agri-inputs.
“So we’re hoping to get one step closer to that and just make it more affordable and more accessible. The company was looking to getting into retail as the products were available in Hop Tiy in Suva as well as Jaijas Chemical and Hardware Navua and Navua Prime Timber.
Mr Hay said they were also thinking about setting up organic plus bowsers.
“So think of it like a service station for your cars.
“We are hoping to get into strategic locations like for example in Navua as it services, the Highland regions of Namosi, Serua, the Beqa farmers as well as the surrounding Navau farmers.
He said once the browser and a tank was set up people would be able to reduce the use of plastics as they would get to bring their own bottles and containers to refill the organic fertiliser.
Mr Hay said that if farmers had been using chemical fertilisers for a long time without feeding their soil, then compact soils, increased soil acidity, smaller yields and increased plant diseases would be familiar to them.
“We understand that this ends up costing farmers a lot, as they have to buy more expensive chemical fertilisers and pesticides to offset the decrease in yield, and increase in diseases.
“This brings us to the benefits of using compost, and in particular, our BioActive Liquid Compost.
“Our product is a concentrate that contains over 1 billion effective microbes per milliliter.
“When sprayed on your soil around the base of your plants, the effective microbes get to work eating sugar from your plants root system and excreting natural NPK.”
He said they restored a healthy balance in the soil food web, which helped decrease plant diseases and pests.
“This means that over time, and with your soil getting healthier, your use of chemical NPK and pesticides will drastically reduce.
“Our BioActive Liquid Compost is very easy to use, and really affordable compared to other alternatives. Each liter of concentrate can make up to 20 liters of liquid compost.”
The product was available in 5 litre bottles for $20 and 20 litre drums for $70.
Mr Hay said they were hoping to make it affordable for farmers, specifically with the coverage that their product had.
The product was in development stage for the last two years during the pandemic.
Mr Hay said the business survived as they focused on other areas as well.
The company was also licensed under the Fijian Organic emblem of the Fijain Made.
“We didn’t know that we were the first people to get it.
“Obviously a mark a certification from a government body that certifies it as organic definitely helps, because there are a lot of people out there that are bringing in or making their own organic fertiliser.”
