How to Convert Crop Wastes to Money
Crop wastes can be in the form of harvested crop stalks, leaves, tubers, stems, roots, and many other parts of a plant. Some can even be the same crop produce that was wasted or ignored during the harvesting process either because they were over-ripped, under-ripped, not well shaped, or appear small sized among many other reasons that a crop can be rejected for.
However, despite being regarded as waste, there are certain ways that one can use to make them beneficial by using or converting them into a source of income directly or indirectly.
Now let’s take a look at those methods;
How to Convert Crop Wastes into Money
Below are the various ways one can use to make crop wastes become beneficial;
1. Mulching
Mulching may be defined as the process of covering the soil surface around the plants to create congenial conditions for crop growth.
This may include moisture and soil conservation, temperature moderation, salinity and weed control, etc. It exerts a decisive effect on the earliness, yield, and quality of the crop.
In a simpler explanation, mulching can be simply defined as the process of covering the upper layer of the plants’ soil to prevent and protect the crop from direct sunlight, excess water, and other factors which can hinder the proper growth and maximum productivity of the plant.
Mulching can be done with materials like leaves, and husks, among many others which are the same materials that appeared to be wasted at some point because the owner was not aware that they can be used as materials for mulching or had the need to use them.
Read Also: What is Mulching and Importance of Mulching
2. Re-Use for Re-planting
Just as clearly stated, some regarded crop wastes materials can actually be used to replant the same crop from which it was generated.
For instance, after harvesting matured cassava tubers on a farm, the cassava farmers may decide to use the same cassava stems which were part of the cassava plant to replant another batch of cassava farm. That way, the farmer may not need to buy more bunches of cassava stems when planting the next cassava farm.
Another great example is potato leaves (leaves of potatoes) which can also be reused as a replanting material after a prior potato harvest.
Also, examples of yam tubers heads (heads of tubers of yam), pineapple suckers, cashew nuts, mango seeds, orange seeds, avocado seeds, and as many as you can remember are all part of crop wastes items or materials that can actually be reused for replanting.
Read Also: Best Green Waste Disposal Methods
3. Process other Useful Products from them
There are some crop wastes whose contents remain beneficial when processed further.
This means that they were never completely a waste but were wrongly tagged because the crop farmer may not be aware of more beneficial products that they can be made of.
Let’s take a palm tree (oil palm tree) for instance, a matured palm tree produces palm fruits that can be harvested when matured and ripped to produce palm oil.
Mow a farmer who is not aware that the oil palm seeds can further be processed can proceed to tag them as wastes and probably dispose of them
Meanwhile, the oil palm seeds after the extraction of palm oil can be allowed to dry and be processed to produce palm kernel oil, and the dust remnants after the processing f the palm kernel oil can equally be used as palm kernel cake (P.K.C) which is commonly used as a part of the raw materials when making animal feeds.
There are also many other crops whose waste items can be reprocessed into a beneficial product.
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4. Charity – Give them Away to Others
This is very simple, as a crop farmer, you can decide to give those crop wastes away as charity to others who might need them especially when you know that they can still be further useful instead of disposing of them.
Take, for instance, you can give out cassava stems, yam tubers heads, and pineapple suckers among many others to those you know who can reuse those materials for planting rather than neglecting them to waste away or dispose them off without using them.
This is where our discussion on this topic comes to an end.
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