Amid declining fertility erosion & environmental hurdles: Organic fertilizer from household waste now lifeline for farmers in Donga Mantung.

At the same time, household waste much of it organic, has often been dumped indiscriminately in communities, blocking waterways, polluting water sources and increasing flood risks.

Today, an initiative led by the African Coalition for Sustainable Energy and Access, ACSEA, and its partners, is helping farmers turn the two challenges into one solution. 

They are now converting household organic waste into compost and bio-fertilisers. Through the practice, communities are restoring degraded soils, reducing dependence on chemical inputs, improving crop yields and helping to protect the environment.

The approach, which began as a pilot intervention in parts of the Donga Mantung Division, is increasingly being embraced by farmers. Many of them now see household waste not as a nuisance but a valuable agricultural resource.

From growing crisis to community solution

Soil degradation is no longer a distant environmental concern in the three Subdivisions of the Division viz; Nkambe, Nwa or Ndu. 

Across the plateau, years of continuous cultivation, deforestation, bush burning and over-reliance on chemical fertilizers have weakened soils that once sustained generations of farmers.

The consequences are visible. Topsoil is washed away during heavy rains, fertile land is becoming scarcer, and water sources are increasingly threatened. 

In grazing areas, pasture quality has declined significantly due to overgrazing and erosion, while shrinking agricultural land has intensified farmer-grazer conflicts.

According to Senior Agriculture Technician and Head of Field Operations at ACSEA, Nfor B. Praise, poor waste management compounds the problem. 

Nfor said many dump sites are located close to streams and springs that supply water to households. Organic waste left to rot in open spaces, he said, releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas, while leachate contaminates soil and groundwater. During the rainy season, waste discarded in streets and drainage channels contributes to flooding.

Yet much of the waste generated in households is organic. Kitchen scraps, crop residues, animal droppings and market waste make up a large proportion of what communities throw away daily.

“When treated as waste, these materials become a source of pollution,” Nfor said, adding that: “But when treated as a resource, they become feedstock for compost and bio-fertilizer production, helping farmers reduce costs and restore soil fertility”.

Recognising this potential, he said ACSEA launched a training programme aimed at helping rural communities transform organic waste into compost and bio-fertilizers. 

The initiative, he said, directly addresses two pressing challenges facing farmers; declining soil productivity and the rising cost of agricultural inputs.

Rather than introducing composting as a stand-alone environmental campaign, ACSEA, he added, chose to work through existing community structures including farmer groups, churches and local training centres.

Strategy proven effective

For the Senior Agriculture Technician, over 2,500 smallholder farmers from over 30 villagers have been trained on composting and bio-fertilizer production techniques in Donga Mantung.

The focus, Nfor said, has been on low-cost methods that rely on locally available materials instead of imported products that require constant external support.

Community ownership has become a key pillar of the initiative, the ASCEA official noted. Environmental management committees, he stated, help coordinate activities and encourage knowledge-sharing among farmers.

“Composting and bio-fertilizer initiatives gain traction faster when they are tied to existing community structures,” Nfor noted, adding that: “It allows communities to take ownership of the process rather than seeing it as an external intervention”.

The training, he said, teaches farmers how to convert materials such as kitchen waste, crop residues, animal dung, urine, ash and grasses into nutrient-rich organic fertilizers that can be applied directly to crops.

The concept may seem simple, but for many farmers it represents a major shift in thinking.

“The cost is very low as compared to the amount of money spent on chemical fertilizers. With fertilizer, the cost is relatively low as most of the ingredients are gotten from the kitchen and animal waste while for the chemical fertilizer, a bag of 50kg bag sells between 35,000 FCFA and 40,000 FCFA,” Nfor noted.

Changing minds, farming practices

Among those who embraced the initiative is Njeshu Biye Stephen, a Pastor of the Cameroon Baptist Convention, CBC. He is also a farmer and trainer at Kakar Baptist Church in Ndu. 

He recalled how concerns about rising fertilizer costs and the economic impact of the Anglophone crisis pushed him to seek alternatives.

“I saw how much people were spending on chemical fertilizer. Many farmers were borrowing money in advance from traders and selling their future harvests at very cheap prices because they needed cash for farm inputs,” Pastor Biye stated.

He said, initially, he experimented with goat dung, poultry droppings, wood ash and kitchen waste. Thanks to ACSEA, Pastor Biye said he received training on improved composting and bio-fertilizer techniques.

“We learned to use cow, goat or pig dung, urine, brown sugar, soybeans and grasses. The new composition method we use now takes only about 15 days,” he explained.

He said the transition was not entirely smooth. “Sometimes getting brown sugar is difficult, and in some periods getting enough animal dung can also be a challenge,” he narrated.

Despite the obstacles, the results, Pastor Biye said, have convinced him. “We see the crops doing extremely well. Production has greatly increased. I am not using chemical fertilizer anymore,” he remarked.

His success, he stated, has encouraged him to organise workshops for other farmers in surrounding communities. Today, Pastor Biye said it is helping spread the practice among local farmers.

Farmers witness results first-hand

For many farmers, seeing is believing. This is the case with Nfor Doris Musa, a farmer in Ndu, who recounted how she followed the training and began producing compost using household waste, wood ash and poultry manure.

“I gathered wood ash and mixed it with household waste and fowl dung. I leave it for some weeks until it was ready and then applied it around my maize plants,” she explained.

The outcome exceeded her expectations, she said. “You need to see how my farm is,” she said with a smile, noting that: “The maize did very well. My huckleberry and potatoes also produced very good harvests using only compost”.

Such testimonies are becoming increasingly common among farmers participating in the programme. Beyond improving yields, many say the practice has significantly reduced their production costs, ways to discard kitchen waste and making them less dependent on expensive imported fertilizers.

Why compost matters

The head of the ACSEA environmental management committee in Nkambe and an agricultural engineer, Kilton, stated that compost offers benefits that go far beyond providing nutrients to crops. 

Unlike chemical fertilizers, which primarily feed plants, he said compost helps rebuild the soil itself.

“It improves soil structure, increases water retention, promotes microbial activity and enhances aeration. Organic matter acts like a sponge, allowing soil to absorb and retain moisture while slowly releasing it to plants during dry periods,” he noted. 

He said this is particularly important in Donga Mantung, where degraded soils often struggle to hold water. The agriculturalist noted that compost also strengthens soil resistance to erosion. 

“By improving soil aggregation and stability, it reduces the likelihood that fertile topsoil will be washed away by heavy rainfall or blown away by wind,” he said.

Experts note that crops such as maize and vegetables respond particularly well to compost because of its ability to improve nutrient retention.

Root crops including cassava, yam and potatoes, they say, benefit from improved soil structure. Legumes such as beans, soybeans and groundnuts, experts noted, can perform well especially when bio-fertilizers containing nitrogen-fixing microorganisms are used.

According to specialists, the benefits may become visible within weeks, although full soil restoration can take months or even years depending on the condition of the land and the composting methods employed.

Fighting floods through better waste management

The initiative’s benefits extend beyond agriculture. By encouraging households to separate organic and inorganic waste, Nfor said farmers are also reducing the volume of waste dumped into streets, streams and flood prevention.

Organic waste that once blocked waterways, he said, is increasingly being diverted into compost pits and bio-fertilizer production sites. 

In areas prone to seasonal flooding, the simple change, Nfor added, can help improve drainage and reduces the accumulation of waste in water channels.

He noted that municipal authorities have a crucial role to play by supporting waste separation at source and creating incentives for community composting initiatives.

Nfor called for stronger municipal policies that encourage the collection and processing of organic waste rather than sending it to dumpsites.

Solution to climate change 

Environmental specialist at the National Observatory on Climate Change, NOCC, Faiza Iyawa, said composting offers significant climate benefits.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, composting is an aerobic process that stabilises organic waste and reduces its volume through microbial activity.

“When organic waste is dumped in landfills or left in unmanaged heaps, it often decomposes under oxygen-poor conditions and produces methane, a greenhouse gas whose warming potential is approximately 28 to 34 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period,” Iyawa noted.

Composting helps avoid the emissions, she declared adding that it “reduces the amount of waste sent to landfills, lowers greenhouse gas emissions and increases the organic matter content of soils”.

The process, he said, contributes to carbon sequestration while improving soil health. 

“Soils rich in organic matter absorb rainfall more effectively, reduce erosion and release water slowly during dry periods,” she said.

Strengthening food security

The impact on food security is another major advantage. According to officials, by reducing dependence on imported agricultural inputs, composting allows farmers to produce food at lower cost while maintaining soil productivity. 

Farmers participating in the programme report improved harvests of maize, beans, potatoes, vegetables and other staple crops. 

Farmers involved in the initiative, say many consumers are happy with food grown naturally with organic manure rather than synthetic inputs.

Challenges remain

Despite growing interest, composting is not without challenges. Producing compost trainers said requires labour, time and consistent access to organic materials. Some bio-fertilizer ingredients remain difficult to obtain in certain communities.

Officials say there is also limited awareness among farmers who have not yet participated in training programmes. They said extension services remain insufficient, and market incentives for organic products are often weak.

To ACSEA, storage infrastructure presents another obstacle, while policy implementation has lagged behind national commitments promoting sustainable agriculture.

Although Cameroon’s food systems blueprint includes measures to encourage composting, reduce reliance on chemical fertilizers and support organic farming, direct financial support for farmers adopting these practices remains limited compared to subsidies available for conventional agricultural inputs.

Scaling up the model

For advocates of the initiative, the next challenge is expansion. ACSEA and environmental experts are calling for waste separation programmes.

They are also pushing for support for community composting centres and subsidies for local compost producers equivalent to those provided for imported chemical fertilizers.

Integrating composting into agricultural extension services, school curricula and municipal development plans, they are noting, is also important.

In Donga-Mantung, farmers are proving that solutions to some of the most pressing environmental challenges can be found not in costly imported inputs but in the waste generated every day in their own homes.

By transforming household waste into organic wealth, experts say, they are restoring depleted soils, reducing flood risks, strengthening food security and building resilience against climate change one compost heap at a time.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3882 of Tuesday August 18, 2026