Farmers in Barbados could soon be using locally made fertiliser from an unlikely source — fish waste.
The innovative project, now in advanced testing, aims to cut costs for growers, reduce agricultural waste and lessen the island’s reliance on imported fertilisers.
At the Graeme Hall research site in Christ Church, heads of lettuce were grown with help from an experimental fish meal fertiliser. The product is made from dried fish scraps — typically discarded by seafood processors — and could offer a sustainable boost to crops and soil health.
“We’re looking at how to use fish waste to support crop production,” said Christina Pooler, officer-in-charge of Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI) Barbados, which is running trials with local seafood company Shorelinez and the International Trade Centre, the funding agency.
“Shorelinez is currently producing a fish meal product where they’re collecting all of their fish waste and drying it.”
The project tackles two problems: reducing fish processing waste while creating affordable local fertiliser. Shorelinez now recycles about 60-65 per cent of its fish. The goal is 100 per cent, says Managing Director David Sumpter.
The lettuce trial has ended and tests are being carried out on soil health, plant vitality and overall harvest quality.
“We would have done our harvest at four weeks,” Pooler said on Monday. “We would have taken samples to send to the lab to test for nutrient content, to check for heavy metals…. With some fish in the ocean, we know that there are different levels of heavy metals. So we just wanted to check to see the heavy metal content in the plant and also the soil health as well.”
The project also analysed key soil nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and micronutrients to evaluate the fertiliser’s impact and inform best practices for future use.
The team is investigating how the fish meal might reduce input costs for farmers.
“We would have used the fertiliser at different rates… so this can help inform as to how much fertiliser may be required,” Pooler said. “And also, we’re looking at how we can incorporate more locally available products, reducing waste… and creating that whole circular economy concept from the ocean to the soil.”
The project idea grew out of previous small-scale experiments by CARDI.
“This has kind of been a project of love for myself and my business partner for probably the last seven years,” said Sumpter. “It started with CARDI making fish emulsion and silage…. We’ve now finished making a substrate using technology that we brought in.”
Pooler said the project aligns closely with the island’s broader climate-smart agriculture strategy and holds strong potential for commercial uptake.
sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb
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