Rationale
Egypt is facing a high population growth rate, which demands for an increase
in agricultural production efficiency.
This is at present
more urgent with higher food prices. Consequently, agricultural field
residues such as straw will only increase in the future. At present, these
waste streams are not economically re-used and will create even larger
problems for air and surface water pollution and having therefore a negative
effect on people and planet.
Objectives
The goal of this project is to identify economically viable and
environmentally sound alternative uses for the approximately 4 M tons of
rice straw in Egypt that are produced each year and thereby reduce the
environmental impact of field burning, which is the current disposal method.
Rice Straw Seminar
As part of this project, a Seminar on Alternative Concepts and Technologies
for Beneficial Utilisation of Rice Straw was organized in June 2009, with a
purpose to present and discuss past and
current initiatives on rice straw
utilisation in Egypt and elsewhere, and share results achieved so far with a
wider public of stakeholders from various sectors. An overview of the
seminar, including downloadable presentations and reports
can be found here.
Main
Results
There are multiple opportunities for Rice Straw utilisation in different
sectors of the economy (see Figure 1). These include applications near
the source, such as in-field recycling and composting, applications within
the region, such as decentral energy production, and applications at the
national level such as sustainable building materials.
A number of very promising developments and new concepts are in development,
and these can provide an important alternative for existing wood products,
energy, and reducing the cost of agricultural production. However, in many
case further product development is necessary to improve the products and
their production process, in order to make them more economically
attractive. For those technologies that have reached maturity, further
demonstration and extension are needed.
Alternative Utilisation options for Rice Straw (click on chart for larger
print)
For further information, please contact:
Dr. Robert Bakker –Project Coordinator
Wageningen University and Research Center, Wageningen,
Tel: +31 317 48 11 67; E-mail: robert.bakker@wur.nl
Dr. Hans van der Beek – Agricultural Counsellor
Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
Tel: +20 2 27363863; E-mail: kai-lnv@minbuza.nl
Please
click
here to download this information in pdf format.