In line with its mission to be a “clean and green” and “organic” island, Bali should accelerate its energy and agriculture self-sufficiency programs, an NGO has urged.
I Gede Suarja, coordinator of the BIRU program with the Yayasan Rumah Energi (YRE) foundation in Bali — a program that has initiated the use of household biogas digesters, said that being self-sufficient in energy and agriculture could be achieved by optimizing the use of alternative energy.
“Not only would it save the consumption of non-renewable energy, as in the BIRU program, but it would also support organic farming through the use of bio-slurry [the residue resulting from biogas production] as organic fertilizer for farmland, so farmers would no longer depend on chemical fertilizers,” Suarja said recently.
As an organic fertilizer, bio-slurry had been proven environmentally friendly and able to improve farm land productivity, he said.
According to Suarja, although the island had great potential to produce biogas, the use of this alternative energy was still limited.
“There is great potential to produce biogas, a renewable energy, from livestock dung, as many families in Bali breed pigs, chickens and cows,” he said, illustrating that on average, each farming family on the island bred two to three cows and four to five pigs, which was sufficient as a source of biogas.
