Owls, Cobra Snakes or Liquid Smoke to Repel Mice at Palm Oil Plantations?

Mice are animals that disrupt various human activities so they must be expelled or killed. Many stories from farmers who experienced crop failure due to rampant rat pests. Likewise in palm oil plantations, rats will damage the palm fruit. Biological countermeasures are mostly carried out, namely with owls and cobra snakes. While other efforts that can be done is by liquid smoke. Aside from being used for fertilizer, liquid smoke can also be used to repel these mice. A strong aroma and an acidic nature will make the mice away from the palm oil trees that have been given liquid smoke. The longer the effect of liquid smoke on the palm oil tree the longer the mice away from the palm tree.

Liquid smoke does not harm humans and can be produced in large quantities. Besides that liquid smoke also comes from biomass (pyrolysis) so that it is an environmentally friendly chemical and from renewable sources. Empty bunches or EFB which have generally not been utilized by palm oil mills can be used for the production of liquid smoke. In addition to liquid smoke, biochar is also produced which is also very useful in the palm oil plantations, for more details, please read here. Production of liquid smoke and biochar from EFB will also be a solution to handling solid waste in the form of empty bunches. The production of biochar and liquid smoke for large scale can be done only with continuous pyrolysis units, for more details, please read here.

While when biochar and liquid smoke are used in oil palm plantations, the pyrolysis product in the form of syngas and biooil can be used for boiler fuel. When syngas and biooil are used as fuel, palm kernel shells and a number of mesocarp fibers can be sold or exported like CPO. PKS (palm kernel shell) or shell can be exported directly to Japan or Korea. Whereas mesocarp fiber can be made pellets or briquettes before being exported. Production of pellets or briquettes from mesocarp fiber is almost the same as the production of wood pellets or sawdust briquettes, for reference can be read here and here.

Back to the laptop. So the production of liquid smoke from pyrolysis of empty palm bunches is more likely to be a solution to overcome rat pests in addition to various other advantages for palm oil plantations and mills. In addition, liquid smoke can also be used for fertilizers and is not harmful. Even to optimize the control of rodent pests is very possible with a combination of liquid smoke with owls and cobra snakes.

EFB Biochar and Fertilizer Savings in Palm Oil Plantations

High palm oil plantation productivity and high oil yield has always been a goal in the palm oil business. The nutrient estimates needed to produce 25 tons of FFB / ha / year were 192 N, 11 P, 209 K, 36 Mg, and 71 Ca in kg / ha / year. With the production of 25 tons of FFB / ha / year palm oil or CPO crude will produce around 6.5 tons (25% of FFB). Analogy in the field of animal husbandry where the feed component holds 75% of production costs or is the highest cost component, as well as fertilizer, especially in palm oil plantations. Fertilizer is the most expensive cost or 60% of total maintenance costs. To achieve this productivity, the calculation practically of the need is more or less as follows: an afdeling with an area of ​​1,000 hectares with 1 hectare consisting of 143 trees, so there are 143,000 trees of palm oil. If the dose per tree is 2.5 kg, then the fertilizer needs are 357,500 kg (357.5 tons), with the price of non-subsidized chemical fertilizers for example Rp 10,000 / kg, the cost incurred is 3,575,000,000 (Rp. 3,575 billion or US$ 238,333). If an area of ​​10,000 hectares means fertilizer needs of Rp. 35.75 billion (US$ 2,383,33), whereas if the oil palm plantation is 20,000 hectares, it will reach Rp. 71.50 billion (US$ 4,766,667). Of course an amount that is not small.

The question is what efforts can be made to reduce fertilizer costs but increase palm productivity. One contradictory thing seems to be because it reduces the supply of fertilizer but expects high productivity. This is where we need to examine and explore the facts that occur in the field. With a tropical climate and high rainfall, it makes large leached fertilizers. A condition, for example in hilly and bumpy areas, when the rain falls, the fertilizer that is washed is very large, even in vain fertilization is done because it is not absorbed by the palm trees as the target. The high level of leaching from the use of fertilizers by rainwater makes only available a small amount of available fertilizer in real terms or a number of analyzes said averaging only 50%. With the available fertilizers there are only a few that are also automatically absorbed by the palm trees. When for example washing (leaching) can be reduced by only 30%, it means that the fertilizer that is still available becomes 70%, so that the fertilizer is absorbed more and more and the productivity of the palm oil fruit also increases.

The initial stage that can be done is the cost of the same fertilizer but the productivity of the palm oil fruit can increase up to for example 30%. Furthermore, if this can be achieved, fertilizer consumption will be reduced for example up to 30% but palm oil productivity can be maintained at that level. This is possible when biochar has become a microbial colony and the quality of the soil increases so that uptake of fertilizer is maximal. Biochar is one of the media that can be used for this. An empty fruit bunch that is widely available in palm oil mills and is generally not utilized as a raw material for biochar production. A palm oil mill with a production capacity of 60 tons / hour FFB will produce EFB 13.2 tons / hour so that if the palm oil mill operates 20 hours / day the EFB produced 264 tons / day. The production of biochar with pyrolysis can also produce liquid smoke which can also be used as fertilizer.

Why can biochar be used to increase palm oil productivity and even reduce fertilizer consumption? This is because biochar with its pores with a surface area of ​​about 200 m2 / gram can hold the fertilizer from washing, maintain moisture and many soil microbes that can live in these pores thus improving the physical and chemical properties of the soil. Biochar can last up to hundreds of years in the soil so it does not need to be added every year when the amount is sufficient. Biochar implementation can be started from small scale to massive scale. To process empty fruit bunches (EFB)  in the palm oil mill into biochar, a continuous pyrolysis equiment is needed, to be more clearly read here. To monitor the effectiveness of biochar on oil palm plantations today can use internet technology or IoT (Internet of Things) and for more details can be read here and here.