[Digestion] Biogas plant at Zoo

[Anand Karve]

Dear Mr. Eaton,
I made a very simple experiment in that I applied just half a gram sugar to
one kg soil and found that the bacterial population in the soil increased
500 times within 24 hours. Because the microbes are unicellular and because
they do not have mechanical tissues like cellulose and lignin, they have
almost 10 to 15 % minerals on dry weight basis. Plants have just 5%
minerals. Although the agricultural textbooks tell us that the minerals in
the soil were insoluble in water, they have actually very low solubility.
Because sugar does not have any minerals, my experiment showed that if a
carbon source was made available to the soil microbes, they were capable of
taking up the necessary minerals from soil water, in spite of the extremely
low solubility of soil minerals. There already exists in Maharashtra State,
India, a relatively large group of farmers which follows agricultural
principles laid down by an old savant by the name of Parashar. He must have
lived about fifteen hundred years ago. His writings, originally in Sanskrit
language, were translated about 50 years ago. The followers of Parashar
apply to their soil, once every three months, 25kg each of sugar and
cowdung and 25 litres of cow urine per hectare and nothing else. They get
excellent yield and they also report that they do not use any pesticides in
their fields. I put a Ph. D. student of mine to visit these farmers and
collect data from them. I too visited many of them and found that
there existed many variations of the original Parashar formula. Some
farmers applied honey instead of sugar, some applied butter fat, while some
applied only dung and nothing else. One farmer used green leaves at the
rate of 125 kg per ha. All of them reported very high yield and a very
healthy crop. I verified the yield and the state of crops of these
farmers.  Unfortunately, my Ph.D. student abandoned the work because of
some property dispute in the family, but I kept pursuing this matter and I
think that I have now discovered the scientific explanation to the success
of this type of farming. An article written by me under the title "
Agriculture using soil minerals instead of chemical fertilizers"  forms one
chapter of a book titled "Biotechnology for Sustainable Development",
edited by Seyed Hasnain, Rashmi Bhavanath Jha and R.N.Sharan; and published
by Tata McGraw Hill Education Private Ltd, New Delhi. I had applied to the
Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, for a research
grant to take this work forward, but my request was not granted, most
probably because it contradicted the views held by the Science
Establishment. I am now 77 years old and since I have retired from active
research, there is no chance for me to pursue this theme any further.
Yours
A.D.Karve

On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 2:26 AM, <alexanderb.eaton at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thank you Dr. Karve! I appreciate further explanation. Dung is not
> considered fuel directly in Mexico, and there are surely dry areas that
> would benefit from the use of dung as fuel, especially as the availability
> of water is a challenge for biogas plants.
>
> The fertilizer perspective is also very interesting.  Adding the slurry to
> the plant matter and sugar seems like the ideal mix to increase microbes
> and organic matter.  Are the rates you mentioned pretty much fixed?
>
> Best,
> A
> Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Anand Karve <adkarve at gmail.com>
> Sender: "Digestion" <digestion-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org>
> Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 08:41:58
> To: For Discussion of Anaerobic Digestion<
> digestion at lists.bioenergylists.org>
> Reply-To: For Discussion of Anaerobic Digestion
>         <digestion at lists.bioenergylists.org>
> Subject: Re: [Digestion] Biogas plant at Zoo
>
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> for more information about digestion, see
> Beginner's Guide to Biogas
> http://www.adelaide.edu.au/biogas/
> and the Biogas Wiki http://biogas.wikispaces.com/
>
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> for more information about digestion, see
> Beginner's Guide to Biogas
> http://www.adelaide.edu.au/biogas/
> and the Biogas Wiki http://biogas.wikispaces.com/
>
>


-- 
***
Dr. A.D. Karve
Trustee & Founder President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)
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