The biodigester at the Renig plant in Jayaque, southwestern El Salvador, processes 200,000 tons of chicken manure annually from the farms of the company El Granjero. This serves as the raw material for producing biogas, which is used to generate electricity injected into the national grid. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
JAYAQUE, El Salvador, Jul 25 2025 (IPS)

Still in its early stages and with few players, the poultry sector in El Salvador is taking small steps toward environmentally sustainable production by using its biological waste to generate biogas and, in turn, electricity –an equation that benefits the natural environment, communities, and the farms themselves.

El Granjero is the second-largest egg-producing company in the country, with over one million chickens distributed across its eight farms. After an investment of US$2.5 million, it created the subsidiary Renig to build a biogas plant in 2017.“I thought biodigesters were the most suitable because you solved the environmental problem right away, and the possibility of being profitable” –Bernhard Waase.

A year later, it began processing 200 000 tons of chicken manure and other organic waste annually.

This waste serves as the raw material for producing biogas, the fuel used to generate electricity, which the company then injects into the national power grid.

“Back around 2010 or 2012, we discussed what to do with all the chicken manure because the way it was being handled—by poultry farmers in the country and, I’d say, around the world—was that it was dumped in the open air,” Bernhard Waase, director of Renig, told IPS. The facility is located in La Labor, within the district of Jayaque, in the southwestern department of La Libertad.

At least five of El Granjero’s eight farms, which are dedicated exclusively to egg production, are situated in this rural settlement.

Bernhard Waase, director of Renig, a subsidiary of the Salvadoran company El Granjero, where chicken manure from eight farms is converted into biogas. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

An Environmentally Friendly Solution 

The environmental pollution caused by the poultry sector has been a source of tension for rural communities living near the farms that were established in their territories or expanded around them over time, as was the case with El Granjero, founded in 1968.

“When the company was established, there wasn’t a single house nearby; it was completely uninhabited,” Waase noted before showing IPS around the plant facilities. But the issue of environmental pollution remained.

“I thought biodigesters were the most suitable because they solved the environmental problem immediately, but there was also at least a possibility of being profitable,” said Waase, referring to the potential for generating electricity.

The country’s poultry sector produces approximately 1.2 billion eggs and 342 million pounds of chicken meat annually, according to data from the Salvadoran Poultry Association.

However, despite being crucial in food production for the country, its contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) is low, at just 0.79%, though within the agricultural GDP, it accounts for 16%.

Few companies in the poultry sector have chosen to invest in environmentally friendly solutions for biological waste.

One of them is Grupo Campestre, one of the largest chicken producers, which invested seven million dollars to set up its biogas plant and process the 40,000 tons of biological waste generated annually by its farms, processing plant, and fried chicken restaurants owned by the consortium nationwide.

Laying hens at the San Jorge farm, one of eight owned by the egg producer El Granjero. The manure from these farms in southwestern El Salvador is used for biogas production. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Biogas production in El Salvador is minimal compared to other renewable energy segments. In fact, its share is so small that it does not appear in the national energy matrix, which is dominated by hydropower (33.7%), geothermal (23%), and natural gas (16%).

Meanwhile, photovoltaics account for 8.5%, and wind power barely represents 2.1%.

In recent years, there has been notable interest in El Salvador, a country of six million people, in promoting clean, renewable energy production, which represents 70% of the country’s energy matrix, according to official figures.

The Renig executive stated that producing electricity from biogas is expensive and complex, as it not only requires investment in facilities and personnel but the process itself is extremely complicated.

“It’s costly because of the equipment and the operation of production. It’s not like solar—that’s child’s play: you have the land, you install the panels, you make the connections that any university student can do, and that’s it,” said Waase.

The complexity of biogas production also lies in dealing with bacteria, living organisms that can behave unpredictably and affect gas production, explained Melissa Ruiz, in charge of the digester and secondary processes.

Sometimes the bacteria get “sick,” she noted, and they must be carefully tended to.

“The digester works like our stomach, and the bacteria are very sensitive to the elements we provide them—just like us: if we suddenly eat too much meat or an unbalanced diet, our stomach reacts, and we feel sluggish or get sick. The same thing happens with the digester,” Ruiz told IPS.

The biogas produced by the Renig plant’s biodigester, using waste from a Salvadoran poultry company, powers two engines with a generation capacity of 425 kilowatts each. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

An Eco-Friendly Plant 

Once El Granjero decided to bet on biogas production through its subsidiary, it began working on the technical, operational, and financial details of what would become the Renig plant, where a biodigester measuring 92 meters long, 17 meters wide, and 5 meters deep—with a capacity of 5,300 cubic meters—would be built.

The biodigester is the centerpiece of any biogas plant. Inside, bacteria break down the biological waste from the farms—in El Granjero’s case, chicken manure.

This decomposition process generates gases, including methane, which become the fuel to power the plant’s two engines, each with a generation capacity of 425 kilowatts.

If not used for electricity production, these gases would rise into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), methane is a potent greenhouse gas with a warming potential 80 times greater than carbon dioxide.

This gas is also the main contributor to ground-level ozone formation, a dangerous air pollutant whose exposure causes 1 million premature deaths worldwide each year.

The Renig plant’s biodigester began producing biogas in 2018, but it only started generating electricity in 2021, as that was the year it participated in a government tender for renewable energy production.

During the period when no electricity was generated, the biogas had to be “flared” to prevent the gases from escaping into the atmosphere, using a combustion torch the company had to purchase for US$40,000.

“This torch basically burned all the biogas, and I thought: I’m literally burning money. Since February 2021, this torch hasn’t been lit because I’ve been generating energy,” said Waase.

As part of its production processes, the Renig biogas plant also produces high-quality fertilizer, which it markets to the agricultural sector. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

The Business Moves Slowly but Surely 

Two years earlier, in 2019, Renig won the contract to inject 0.85 megawatts into the national grid—a modest amount but significant as a starting point.

For reference, the Nejapa biogas plant, built in 2011 and operated by AES El Salvador at a cost of US$58 million, has an installed capacity of six megawatts.

Waase stated that, environmentally, the plant has achieved its primary goal of preventing pollution, which is already a cause for celebration and pride, as few large companies in the poultry sector have taken this step. Specifically, in the egg industry, El Granjero is the only one that made this investment.

However, financially, expectations have not been fully met.

“From an environmental standpoint, it’s been a total success, but financially speaking, it’s much more complicated. We haven’t lost money in any year, but we’re nowhere near the return we had projected,” he said.

Nteranya Sanginga, Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Courtesy of IITA

By Nteranya Sanginga
IBADAN, Nigeria, Nov 23 2015 (IPS)

Finding a way to allow youth to contribute their natural and ample energies to productive causes is increasingly the touchstone issue that will determine future prosperity.

It is a tragic irony that today’s youth, despite being the most educated generation ever, struggle to be included.

That’s true in advanced countries. But it is even more true in Africa, where almost two-thirds of the jobless are young adults, whose ranks swell by 10 to 12 million new members each year. The challenge is staggering in scale: Today there are 365 million Africans aged 15 to 35, and over the next 20 years that figure will double.

There is no magic wand. It is youth themselves who must find a solution.

Everyone else – governments, international organizations, the private sector, social groups and parents – has a huge stake in their success and so must not stand in the way. Normally one hears about the need to help cast in elaborate theories based on the need for redistribution. But the truth is, we need a step change.

That’s the spirit the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) is adopting with our “agripreneur” coaching programmes. These aim to use self-help groups so that people can indeed help themselves. As I bluntly told a group of youth in Uganda, we will provide support in the form of technology, knowledge and advocacy, but the real activity has to be done by themselves. Another message was: “be aggressive.”

It is well known that Africa is a vast land of family farmers, many living in rural areas and regularly struggling with poverty and hunger. Figures can also be easily made to show how most family farms are exercises in subsistence, and don’t always succeed without external help.

Family farming is a way of life, to be sure. But that does not mean, when you really think about it, that it cannot be done as a business. Doing so would represent a change, but the time has come. Making agriculture a commercial trade offers a set of new tools to entice talented youth to a sector we all know they tend to run away from.

As Akinwumi Adesina, formerly Nigeria’s agriculture minister and now the president of the African Development Bank, likes to say, “Africa’s future millionaires and billionaires will make their money from agriculture.”

And it is quite likely that youth, being in a proverbial rush, will accelerate the transformations that will lead to better lives than a mad rush to cities where employment prospects aren’t keeping pace with urban population. Moreover, agriculture has been the weak link in terms of productivity growth across the continent – that means there is an enormous upside to doing it better.

Knowledge needs pollinators. While extension services are excellent and should be upgraded, young people are natural communicators when they think something is cool and useful. That’s what agriculture has to be.

IITA’s agripreneur campaign hinges on our version of a Silicon Valley hackathon. Incubators are created to allow youth to learn and exchange ideas of a practical nature – about how to keep accounts, new crops and farming techniques, the myriad possibilities of agricultural value chains that include roles for seed traders, food processors, weather forecasters, insurance salespeople, marketing specialists.

One of our agripreneur “interns” told me that what he took away was that success is not in fact all down to money. An enterprise really needs ideas, of course, and the ability to plan.

To be clear, his enthusiasm – as so many of our alumni say – was about the possibility of enterprise. Call it agribusiness. Agricultural commodity value chains provide just that, a series of transactional opportunities that work to improve efficiency for all and reward the talented. This is a major catalyst for youth. After all, it opens the door for the professionalization of agriculture.

To be sure, the agribusiness model crucially requires inclusive efforts to make sure credit is available to youth, to assure that gender equity becomes an operational assumption rather than just a goal, and a host of public goods including scientific research. Yet it begins with a changed mind set.

People must learn how to apply for a loan. Bankers always say they wish to fund on the basis of a business plan rather than collateral. It is time to put that to the test. IITA’s focus on agripreneurs is a well-placed bet on the idea that nobody learns faster than youth.

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An unidentified woman from Zimbabwe's Mashonaland Central Province at Manzou Farm packs her tobacco with the help of her children as they prepare to leave following an eviction order. “Land grabs in Africa have helped to perpetuate economic inequalities similar to the colonial era economic imbalances” – Terry Mutsvanga, Zimbabwean rights activist. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Apr 8 2015 (IPS)

There is a new scramble for Africa, with ordinary people facing displacement by the affluent and the powerful as huge tracts of land on the continent are grabbed by a minority, rights activists here say.

“Our forefathers cried foul during colonialism when their land was grabbed by colonialists more than a century ago, but today history repeats itself, with our own political leaders and wealthy countrymen looting land,” Claris Madhuku, director of the Platform for Youth Development (PYD), a democracy lobby group in Zimbabwe, told IPS.

Civil society activist Owen Dliwayo, who is programme officer for the Youth Dialogue Action Network, another lobby group here, said multinational companies were to blame in most African countries for land seizures.“Our forefathers cried foul during colonialism when their land was grabbed by colonialists more than a century ago, but today history repeats itself, with our own political leaders and wealthy countrymen looting land” - Claris Madhuku, Zimbabwe’s Platform for Youth Development (PYD)

“I can give you an example of the Chisumbanje ethanol fuel project here in Chipinge. The project resulted in thousands of villagers being displaced to pave way for a sugar plantation so that thousands of hectares of land space could be created for the ethanol-producing project, consequently displacing poor villagers,” Dliwayo told IPS.

The 40,000 hectare sugar cane plantation which started in 2008 left more than 1,754 households displaced, according to PYD.

Fifteen years ago, Zimbabwe embarked on a controversial land reform programme to address colonial land-ownership imbalances, but activists have dismissed the move as disastrous for this Southern African nation.

“To say African nations like Zimbabwe addressed the land problem is untrue because land which African governments like Zimbabwe grabbed from white farmers was parcelled out to political elites at the expense of hordes of peasants here,” Terry Mutsvanga, an award-winning Zimbabwean rights activist, told IPS.

“Land grabs in Africa have helped to perpetuate economic inequalities similar to the colonial era economic imbalances,” he added.

In 2010, ZimOnline, a Zimbabwean news service, reported that about 2,200 well-connected black Zimbabwean elites controlled nearly 40 percent of the 14 million hectares of land seized from white farmers, with each farm ranging in size from 250 to 4,000 hectares, with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his family said to own 14 farms spanning at least 16,000 hectares.

Further up in East Africa, according to a 2011 presentation by Uganda’s Joshua Zake titled ‘Land Grabbing; silent pain for smallholder farmers in Uganda’, key characters of land grabbing in that country are also a few wealthy or powerful individuals against many vulnerable individuals or communities.

Zake is Senior Programme Officer Environment and Natural Resources and Coordinator of the Uganda Forestry Working Group at Environmental Alert.

According to Zake, land grabbing in Africa, particularly in Uganda, is promoted by the suspected presence of oil and other mineral resources beneath the land, such as in Uganda’s Amuru and Bulisa districts.

Zake’s remarks fit well with Zimbabwe’s situation, where more than 800 families were displaced by government from Chiadzwa in Manicaland Province after the discovery of diamonds there in 2005.

But land grabs in Africa may also be rampant in towns and cities, according to private land developers here.

“There is high demand of land for the construction of homes in towns and cities across Africa owing to the sharp rural-to-urban migration,” Etuna Nujoma, a private land developer based in Windhoek, the Namibian capital, told IPS.

“The wealthy and the powerful as well as the corrupt politicians are taking advantage of the land demand and therefore often parcelling out urban land amongst themselves for resale at exorbitant prices at the expense of the poor.”

Last year, irked by corrupt local authorities appearing to be dishing out land among themselves for resale, a group of informal settlement dwellers outside Namibia’s coastal holiday town of Swakopmund occupied municipal land with the intention of settling there.

With land grabs at their peak in Zimbabwe, members of the ruling Zanu-PF party are measuring out land pieces which they then give to people who pay in the range of 10 to 20 dollars for 30 to 50 square metres, depending on the areas in which they want to obtain housing stands, according to Andrew Nyanyadzi of Zanu-PF.

“We don’t need permission from local authorities for us to have access to the land which our liberation war leaders fought for. It’s our land and we are therefore selling at affordable prices to ruling party loyalists,” Nyanyadzi told IPS.

Houses that once sheltered farmworkers stand empty as lands are reallocated for commercial farming and other profit-making purposes in Africa. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

Consequently, lobby groups in Zimbabwe say havoc rules supreme in the country’s towns and cities.

“In Harare, land belonging to the city has been taken over by known militant groups of people with links to Zanu-PF, whom police here are even afraid to apprehend,” Precious Shumba, the director of Harare Residents Trust, told IPS.

“This is exactly what happened to Harare’s urban land in Hatcliff high density area, where housing cooperatives belonging to the ruling Zanu-PF leaders have grabbed council land using their political power,” Shumba said.

However, like other countries across Africa, Zimbabwe’s local authority by-laws prohibit individuals or organisations from selling land that does not legally belong to them.

Meanwhile, in Mozambique, the poor are losing out to foreign investors on land rights there despite the state being the sole owner of land.

Under the country’s constitution, there is no private land ownership – land and its associated resources are the property of the state – although the country’s Land Law grants private persons the right to use and benefit from the land whether or not they have a formal title. However, loopholes have emerged in the law.

A survey last year by Mozambique’s National Farmers’ Union showed that there was a colonial-era style land grab there, with politically-connected companies in the former Portuguese colony seizing hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland from peasants.

According to GRAIN, a non-profit organisation supporting small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems, peasants in northern Mozambique have difficulties keeping their lands as foreign companies set up large-scale agribusinesses there.

The NGO says Mozambicans are being told that these projects will bring them benefits, but this is not how Caesar Guebuza and other Mozambican peasants see it.

“Agricultural investments by foreign companies have not benefitted us, but rather we have lost land to these companies investing here and we are being treated as aliens in our own land,” Guebuza told IPS.

Economists blame the Mozambican government for favouring foreign investors, who now possess large swathes of state land.

“The Mozambican government is known for siding with foreign investors who now occupy huge tracts of land for their own use as local peasants lose out on land, which is their birth right,” Kingston Nyakurukwa, a Zimbabwean independent economist, told IPS.

With foreign investors acquiring huge tracts of land ahead of locals in Africa, ActionAid Tanzania earlier this year said that through the European Union, United States and several European countries, the European Union’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition plans to invest 7.57 billion euros in agricultural development and food security across Africa.

However, said Nyakurukwa, these will be business ventures that will strip Africans of their hard-earned money as they buy agricultural produce.

Similarly, in Nigeria, Mozambique and Tanzania, smallholder farmers are being moved off their land, paving the way for sugarcane, rice and other export crop-growing projects backed by New Alliance money, according to ActionAid Tanzania’s findings.

For Africans in Tanzania, big money might be gradually rendering them landless.

“Money from investors seem to be elbowing us out of our native lands here in Tanzania as no one has been offered the choice of whether to be resettled or not as we are being forcibly offered money or land for resettlement,” Moses Malunguja, a disgruntled peasant from Tanzania, told IPS.

Edited by Phil Harris