Strategy, Innovation and Innovation

Overview

I am a Senior Agronomist at BestCrop Farm which is composed of 2 departments: Crop and Livestock. The farm methods of production are outdated and this poses problems:

• Crop yields and farm revenues are very low.

• Water is left to run off instead of being collected/conserved after the rains.

• The 2 departments work independently of each other so synergies are lost.

There is a sizeable unused portion of the farm that is not suitable for tillage because it is rocky so this has to be exploited. There are still revenues to be captured if we adopt new technologies. Generally, the farm is not being used to its maximum potential so there is a need to change the current way of doing things. I therefore propose a plan that the firm can follow towards sustainability: an Integrated Aquaculture System. This will be a network of 10 concrete fish ponds constructed on the rocky site and connected to each other by a series of pipes. The system will have the following benefits:

• Extra revenue from sale of Tilapia fish to the local community and hotels as there is a high demand for freshwater fish.

• The wastes produced by the fish will be collected in a settlement tank and later used in the Crop department as manure.

• This system will also consist of a biological water-purification system where dirty water from the ponds leaves one end, irrigates the rice fields and comes out through the other end as clean water that is pumped back into the fish ponds – thus, water is recycled which makes the farm sustainable. (a diagram on this system can be found in Appendix A)

In these plans, I recommend construction of water harvesting structures like tanks in which rain can be collected to be used for various farm activities. Currently, a lot of energy is used in pumping water from boreholes – costs that can be minimized by harvesting rainfall instead of letting it seep into the ground. Also a biogas digester is incorporated into the works so that wastes from the...