Oman to produce 900 tons of soil fertilizer per year from palm waste

Oman kicks off project to make fertilizers from palm waste: Oman’s Ministry of Agricultural, Fisheries, and Water Resources has launched a project to produce “eco-friendly soil enhancers” in the Barka coastal city in the country’s south, Muscat Daily reported last week. At a cost of RO 180k (USD 466.8k), the new plant will produce soil fertilizers from palm residue such as leaves and fronds, turning what would have been waste into a cheaper alternative to imported fertilizers. By using a total of around 9k palm trees, the project aims to produce approximately 900 tons of agricultural soil enhancer annually.

How they’re going to do it: The project will need four hectares of land and will follow a seven-stage production process, CEO of the Agricultural Soil Enhancer Production Project Muhammad Al Rawahi explained to Muscat Daily. The process includes collection, cutting of palm waste, drying, chopping, drying again, and finally packaging the product. One palm tree can yield about 100 kg of organic soil enhancer per year.

The benefits: Palm residues contain essential elements such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and other various microelements that nutrify plants, Al Rawahi said. This is beneficial for a wide diversity of crops, from vegetables and fruits, to natural and aromatic plants, and even ornamental plants. This can help Oman become more self-sufficient and have better competitiveness against imported products, Al Rawahi added.

Why is this important? The global production of fertilizers is responsible for around 1.4% of annual CO2 emissions — almost equivalent to the emissions of Germany alone, Carbon Brief reports. IPCC’s sixth assessment report on mitigation published last year found that rising nitrous oxide emissions are “dominated by agriculture, notably from manure application, nitrogen deposition and nitrogen fertilizer use,” Carbon Brief said. Additionally, numerous studies link the exposure of traditional pesticides and fertilizers to serious effects to human health such as cancer, effects on reproduction, immune and nervous systems, along with disruptions to vital environmental ecosystems and the spread of aquatic hypoxia or “dead” zones in the oceans where there a reduced level of oxygen in the water.

Palm is plentiful in our region: If successful, Oman’s program has the potential to spread across the region given the widespread presence of the tree. Saudi Arabia has around31 mn palm trees, and UAE palm tree supplier Date Palm Dubai said that the UAE has about 44 mn date palm trees as of 2020. In 2018, Egypt recorded having 15.5 mn palm trees planted on an area of 86k feddans.