Organic seaweed liquid fertilizer from Kenya – A good practice for coastal communities comes from Mohdhar Mohamed, a visionary entrepreneur from Kenya who based his business on the circular economy and environmental sustainability concepts.
Morganics & Allied Ltd is a Kenyan firm specialized in the production and trade of seaweed products based on seaweed sustainable harvesting and carried out by the beach management units and touristic operators.
For many long time, seaweed products have been used to help plant growth, especially before the advent of commercial fertilizers production. They provide many benefits to plants more then what conventional fertilizers can do, in order to encourage a stronger and healthier growth. In fact, stronger and healthier plants are more prone to withstand environmental stresses (such as drought, salinity, insect pests, and diseases). Having said that, most farmers should incorporate seaweed products into their repertoire.
Morganics’ fertilizer contains over 70 different minerals traces. Most importantly, it is an excellent source of cytokines and auxins, two essential plant growth hormones. It also contains vitamins, natural chelating agents, and amino acids. The gentle N-P-K values could imply its natural, whole-food, broad spectrum qualities, fundamental to the soil food web. This is achieved by the improvement of soil tilth, that regulates cell division and cell wall formation, to the increase in photosynthesis and chlorophyll production, improving root and shoot growth, and delaying senescence (when leaves fall and lose their colour).
Liquid seaweed fertilizer is simply what its name suggests: a fertilizer seaweed based. Also the production process is very simple: seaweed is collected, some of the saltwater gets rinsed away, let it to decompose or ferment in water until the plant material is broken down into a liquid or slurry.
Seaweeds – especially kelp, a large brown type- and liquid seaweed extract have been used for many years as fertilizers in commercial crop production right because of their positive effect on plant growth and yield. Known as biofertilizers, or biostimulants, they offer many benefits over conventional fertilizers.
The term biostimulant was defined in agriculture as “materials, other than fertilizers that promote plant growth when applied in small quantities”. Besides fertilizers, biostimulants are thus natural products that help plants grow better. Lately, there has been an increased awareness regarding the impacts that fertilizers have on the environment and the use of sustainable practices.
This means people are opting to implement responsible interactions with the environment to avoid the degradation or depletion of natural resources and contributing to long-term environmental quality.
Important to know, there are several classifications of biostimulants; for instance, seaweed and kelp products are classified as such because they “contain substance(s) and/or microorganisms whose function when applied to plants or the rhizosphere is to stimulate natural processes to enhance/benefit nutrient uptake, nutrient efficiency, tolerance to abiotic stress, and crop quality”.
Organic seaweed liquid fertilizer from Kenya
