Dung ho! Gujarat villagers fired up about biogas

Limbala, a village in Surendranagar district of Gujarat, has more than 300 families. Most engage in agriculture and related activities, cotton being the most important crop. 

Extensive farming and grazing by the livestock, lack of any major water bodies and an extremely hot and dry climate has resulted in very low vegetation cover in Limbala and nearby areas.

With low average rainfall, many find it difficult to go for a second Rabi crop. Those who do prefer sorghum and wheat. People also rear cattle for their dairy needs. 

The villagers use firewood for cooking.

The high dependency on fuelwood has at times forced the people of Limbala to venture into other villages in search of wood. This has occasionally led to heated exchange of words and other unpleasant situations in the village.

Now, setting up biogas plants is proving to be a win-win solution for people.

The poop project

Anyone with three cattle heads could set up a biogas plant. Because a biogas unit of 2cubic metre  capacity needs 45 kg of dung per day.

Access to direct sunlight and proximity to the house and agricultural field were assessed to pick the optimum location for installing the biogas units. 

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Women-headed households with small and marginal landholding became early champions of setting up these plants as they were the most affected by the rising prices of cooking gas cylinders.

A visit to the National Dairy Development Board, Anand, gave the villagers a better understanding of the nitty gritty of setting up and operating a biogas plant.  

The earth is particularly hard and rocky in the village which makes digging a pit for setting up the unit a challenging task. The villagers hired earthmovers for the task. A specialist then set up the balloons to hold the generated biogas. 

Water, cow dung and urine mixture were then added to the units and left to decompose. After 4-5 days, the plants were fully functional as a source of fuel. 

The good results

Twenty biogas units were set up in 2021 and 2022 in Limbala to varying degrees of success. 

Most households with access to biogas now use it on a regular basis. This has led to reduced consumption of the more expensive LPG, saving up to Rs 5,000 a year in some cases. 

Each biogas unit produces nearly 100 litres of slurry as a by-product. This slurry is used as bio fertiliser to improve soil quality and crop yield. The soil becomes porous and softer after repeated use of slurry and makes the land easy to plough, which is a labour-intensive task. The slurry also acts as a pest repellent due to its strong smell which insects find unpleasant. 

The dependency on fuelwood has dropped among the households using biogas. Women in Limbala now don’t have to bear the drudgery of fuelwood collection in scorching heat as often as they did before. 

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The reduction in fuelwood use has also ensured that there is no smoke and carbon residue in the cooking process. This saves women from inhaling the smoke which affected their health. Since there is no smoke, there is no need to clean soot off the walls and floors.

Biogas holds more promise 

Though originally planned as a greener fuel source, biogas use has also improved the standard of living of the women in the villages along with fulfilling its intended objective.  

More biogas units are now being planned in Limbala. This time the plan is for the community to prepare slurry pits for its better management. In the long run, bio input-based enterprises can be set up in the village if the slurry management initiative goes as intended.  This will help generate employment in the village along with promoting a healthier, cheaper and eco-friendlier means of both fuel and soil enrichment.

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The lead image shows a biogas plant in rural Gujarat (Photo by Govindasamy Agoramoorthy, Shutterstock)

Arkajyoti Patra of Aga Khan Rural Support Programme India, leads a low-carbon agriculture project in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat.