According to the Indian government’s Soil Health Survey 2019-20, almost half of India’s soil is going through degradation. It is mainly due to the usage of fertilisers. Twenty years ago, if farmers used 10 kilos of fertilisers or pesticides on one acre of land, now they are using 100 kilos. That means more damage is being done to the soil.
Pune-based agritech startup Kisanserv attempts to solve this issue by supplying wet waste-turned-compost to farmers. The waste is sourced from urban areas where consumerism is the norm.
Niranjan Sharma, the co-founder and CEO of Kisanserv, realised that most of his clients face the same issue. They all face increasingly alkaline soil PH that makes lands kind of barren. At the same time, cities have issues with waste management. And, these cities have too much wet waste. Niranjan started Kisanserv to bridge the gap.
Started three months ago, Kisanserv currently takes 15 metric tonnes of compost from 200 housing societies. The company has more than 9,000 clients Wet waste, mostly kitchen waste, is used to prepare the compost. The waste added with culture is put through a machine to make compost. The startup distributes it freely to farmers. The target is to hit 300,000 metric tonnes by 2023.
Niranjan says that if we treat our soils with compost, it will help in regaining soil health. Compost-treated farms need less fertiliser, sometimes as low as 90 per cent, than others. That will, in turn, lead to healthier products and healthier people.
