Project NexCities aim to help our farmers in the near future by producing a locally-made fertilizer from sewage that is cheaper (and more sustainable) than the imported product they are currently using. Despite the pandemic, the team is continually testing the efficacy of the powdered struvite- a phosphorus-rich by-product from processing sewage– to growing crops like tomato, eggplant, and other leafy vegetable in Salikneta Farm in Bulacan.
The next step after greenhouse and field testing is sharing the product and the process to selected farmers and see if will be effective in their own farms and also to test the social acceptability of the novel waste-to-fertilizer project.
According to Ms. Apple Suplido from De La Salle Araneta University who is leading the team at Salikneta Farm, struvite testing on leafy vegetables can be shared to the farmers initially as this crop grows faster than the others.
As top stakeholders, the selected farmers will be invited to Salikneta Farm for training on how to apply the newly-developed struvite fertilizer so that it will achieve its full efficacy. The process will also be presented to them for full transparency.
Ms. Amy Lecciones, team lead for Communications, said that they already have a set of farmers ready to take on the challenge of applying the fertilizer developed by the scientists of the NexCities Project.