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.

A poultry farmer from Lumbwe village in Malawi hands her chickens to Lydia Katengeza to administer a vaccine against Newcastle Disease. Credit: Charles Mkoka/IPS

By Charles Mkoka
LILONGWE, Sep 27 2017 (IPS)

Lydia Katengeza, a community vaccinator with the Nathenje Community Vaccination Association (NCVA), wakes up as early as 5 a.m., ready with her I-2 vaccine vial in a storage container in her hand. She moves from one house to another, visiting each poultry farmer. All of them are alerted a day in advance so that they don’t release their free-range chickens in the morning.

The first farmer she visited when an IPS reporter accompanied her on her rounds was Maxwell Panganani, who owns 30 chickens. The whole flock was given the vaccine, which protects poultry from the deadly Newcastle Disease (ND) and costs four cents per chicken. This means Katengeza collected 1.24 dollars from this farmer.Raised by 80 percent of local farmers, poultry is the greatest contribution to household food and nutritional security of all livestock species in Malawi.

She moved on to other households: Makalani Kumapeni, whose 51 chickens were given the vaccine; Chipiliro Kanamwali with 11 chickens; Peter Lumbwe with 24 chickens; Zeze Lumbwe with 14 chickens, Frank Thamisoni with 12 chickens and Samuel Asipolo, who just owns one.

Raised by 80 percent of local farmers, poultry is the greatest contribution to household food and nutritional security of all livestock species in Malawi. Farmers use chickens during weddings, funerals and other rituals, and for sale or as gifts. They are also bartered for other products.

However, despite the important role that chickens play in supporting households in rural areas, there is a major constraint to the expansion and increased productivity of poultry – the frequent devastation of flocks, up to 90 percent, according to the Department of Animal Health and Livestock Development (DAHLD). This damage is caused by ND, which strikes during the hot, dry months of August through to November annually.

The virus presents primarily as an acute respiratory illness, and is one of the most serious of all avian diseases. It is also transmissible to humans.

“We were first trained as farmer field facilitators in 2014 under a CARE Malawi programme. Later CARE linked us with Inter Aide, a French organization that provided us training in the procedures of how to be a community vaccinator,” says Katengeza, who is also village head woman of Chizinga in Traditional Authority Kalumbu, Lilongwe district.

According to Katengeza, the knowledge and procedures learnt during vaccine administration have been of great benefit to her as a farmer. As a result of the training, her chickens no longer die of ND. And as a ripple effect, she has also managed to help her fellow farmers to overcome the disease.

“I now have 10 goats, harvested 70 50-kg bags of maize this year, moulded bricks and built a good house. I am also able to pay school fees for my kids. As a family, we have sustained access to proteins as body-building foods from chickens once slaughtered,” says Katengeza.

She said CARE and Inter Aide have changed her life and that of other farmers.

Another farmer, Eveless Makalani, with a flock of 51 birds, has worked with community vaccinators for some time. She learned about them during the farmer extension meetings they conduct in the village.

“My family gets help from these chickens, especially during funerals and weddings, but also in the event of problems. We sell some of them as they are in high demand on the market, unlike hybrids.”

Malakani adds that the money earned from selling one chicken pays for the vaccination of over 50 chickens from ND – making it a viable business.

Yolomosi Tifere, a male community vaccinator who serves farmers in the Nathenje area, said the project should be expanded to include other health supports.

“This vaccine is for ND fine and good. However, we also need other drugs to address bacteria, cough, intestinal worms so that these problems are also taken care of,” Tifere said in an interview during the field visit.

Graça Archer, Programme Officer for Inter Aide Newcastle Disease Control Programme, said each ND campaign is systematic and runs for four months.

“During the first month, community vaccinators go house to house to do poultry registration, like how many chickens to vaccinate, how many vials are needed. The second month is for the actual vaccination of the chickens and the fourth month is for review of the success and challenges.” Archer explained in an interview.

The peak of the campaign takes place in July because the risk of an outbreak is high. This is when farmers have more money and exchange more chickens and there is a greater probability for them to become infected with ND.

“There is more acceptance from the farmers in July than the two other campaigns. For instance, last year we vaccinated 590,800 chickens,” says Archer, who expressed concerns about the erratic supply of the drug from CVL.

In order to ensure sustainability of the programme, NCVA was formed to strengthen local participation in the fight against ND. Meanwhile, the Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicine is working in partnership with Inter Aide to improve the nutrition and livelihoods of smallholder livestock producers, and enhance family farm productivity and resilience in an increasingly changing climate.

“The I-2 vaccine is thermal tolerant demand driven, people see the benefit of vaccinating chickens so there is exponential growth for the vaccine need. However, production is not managed as an enterprise due to shortage of financing of the drug, hence its erratic availability,” Archer explained.

Gilson Njunga, Officer in Charge at the CVL, says they produce 3,000 bottles of the vaccine per month which translates to about a million dosages administered to chickens, as each bottle accommodates 300 chickens.

“Production of the vaccine vial is at 3,000 bottles monthly because we produce the vaccine within a diagnostic laboratory and not an independent vaccine lab. As such, the production process has to pass through quality control before being certified for use by farmers to ensure they are not contaminated,” Njunga told IPS.

Meanwhile, as a further step towards attaining food and nutritional security, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Malawi Government agreed on a Country Programme Framework estimated at 24.3 million dollars. The rationale for the proposed CPF priority areas is derived from the analysis and the enabling environment for Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture.

The analysis demonstrates that while the country is making good progress in food security and staple crop production, it remains vulnerable to shocks – many climate-related – that impede increased agricultural production, productivity and profitability.

Bags of feed at the Rossgro agribusiness firm in South Africa. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Friday Phiri
MPUMALANGA, South Africa, Jul 6 2017 (IPS)

The United States and Europe’s preference for white meat is hurting Africa’s poultry industry, says Luc Smalle, manager at the agro firm Rossgro in South Africa’s Mpumalanga area.

With 3000 Ha of maize and 1000 Ha of soya, as well as 1,500 heads of beef cattle, Rossgro mills its own feed, which also caters for millions of chickens housed in 40 environmentally controlled houses.Africa’s young, dynamic population has the potential to lead an economic revival in the region, backed by targeted long- and short-term reforms in key areas.

But Smalle is uncertain about the future of the poultry business, not only in South Africa but the whole continent.

He recalled how the US and Europe exported millions of tonnes of chicken meat to the then Soviet Union (now Russia). Historically, Russia was the major importer of America’s dark meat. According to available data, in 2009 alone, Russia is said to have doled out 800 million dollars for 1.6 billion pounds of U.S. leg quarters.

But in 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin banned U.S. chicken from Russian shores, allegedly because it was treated with ‘unsafe’ antimicrobial chlorine. The ban remains in place, although some say it’s more about politics than public health.

Either way, according to Smalle, the ban “has led America and Europe to look for alternative markets to dump brown meat because most of the First World eats white meat, so they are dumping chicken in the third world, especially Africa. We should stand together and work with our governments to stop imports or put high tariffs so that they can’t dump it anymore.”

In a chicken, white meat refers to the breast and wings while legs and thighs are considered red/dark meat. The nutritional difference is fat content. White meat is a leaner source of protein, with a lower fat content, while dark meat contains higher levels of fat, hence the developed world preference for white meat on health grounds.

Smalle believes this state of affairs is hurting African poultry industry competitiveness where the average cost of raising a chicken is far much higher than in the developed world. He says most African farmers rely on bank loans from banks while their European and American counterparts are heavily subsidised by their governments.

“It’s going to kill the whole poultry industry in Africa if nothing is done to reverse the trend; they have subsidies which the African farmer does not have,” Smalle told IPS, citing the South African poultry industry, where he says a third of the workers have lost their jobs because firms have been pushed out of business.

Under free market economics, Smalle’s arguments might seem out of order. But the latest Africa Competitiveness Report 2017 jointly issued by the African Development Bank, World Bank and World Economic Forum seems to support the continent’s argument.

The report warns that without urgent action to address stagnating levels of competitiveness, Africa’s economies will not create enough jobs for young people entering the job market, adding that if current policies remain unchanged, fewer than one-quarter of the 450 million new jobs needed in the next 20 years will be created.

The biennial report comes at a time when growth in most of the region’s economies has been slowing despite a decade of sustained growth, and is likely to stagnate further in the absence of improvements in the core conditions for competitiveness.

Compounding the challenge to Africa’s leaders is a rapidly expanding population, which is set to add 450 million more to the labour force over the next two decades. Under current policies, only an estimated 100 million jobs will be created during this period.

Africa’s young, dynamic population does, however, possess the potential to lead an economic revival in the region, backed by targeted long- and short-term reforms in key areas, the report finds.

“To meet the aspirations of their growing youth populations, African governments are well-advised to enact polices that improve levels of productivity and the business environment for trade and investment,” says the World Bank Group’s Klaus Tilmes, Director of the Trade & Competitiveness Global Practice, which contributed to the report.

“The World Bank Group is helping governments and the private sector across Africa to take the steps necessary to build strong economies and accelerate job creation in order to benefit from the potential demographic dividend.”

Some of the bottlenecks and solutions include strengthening institutions, which experts believe is a pre-condition to enable faster and more effective policy implementation; improved infrastructure to enable greater levels of trade and business growth; greater adoption of technology and support to developing value-chain links to extractive sectors to encourage diversification and value addition.

The World Economic Forum’s Richard Samans, Head of the Centre for the Global Agenda and Member of the Managing Board, believes that “removing the hurdles that prevent Africa from fulfilling its competitiveness potential is the first step required to achieve more sustained economic progress and shared prosperity.”

The Africa Competitiveness report was released in May during the 27th World Economic Forum on Africa in Durban, South Africa, attended by more than 1,000 participants under the theme “Achieving Inclusive Growth through Responsive and Responsible Leadership.”

The report combines data from the Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) with studies on employment policies and city competitiveness.

The U.S. government is in the final stages of weighing approval for an overhaul of regulations governing the country’s poultry industry that would see processing speeds increase substantially even while responsibility for oversight would be largely given over to plant employees.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) inspector at a poultry processing facility in Accomac, Virginia checking for cleanliness and testing poultry for the Avian Influenza (AI) virus. Credit: USDA/public domain

The plan, which was originally floated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) two years ago, is currently slated to be finalised by regulators next month. Yet opposition has been heating up from lawmakers as well as labour, public health and consumer advocacy groups.

On Thursday, over 100 such groups and businesses delivered a letter, along with nearly 220,000 petitions, to President Barack Obama, asking that the proposal be withdrawn.

“The proposed rule puts company employees in the role of protecting consumer safety, but does not require them to receive any training before performing duties normally performed by government inspectors,” the letter states.

“And lack of training is not the only impact this rule will have on workers. Increased [production] speeds will put worker safety in jeopardy … This proposed rule would let the fox guard the hen house, at the expense of worker safety and consumer protection.”

The proposed rule would see top chicken-processing speeds increased from the current 140 per minute to as high as 175. The rule would also decrease the number of federal inspectors assigned to processing plants by 75 percent, leaving the slack to be picked up by company employees.

The poultry industry has reportedly been pushing for these changes for decades. In return, the government would require that processors bathe each chicken carcass in chlorine and other chemicals, aimed at killing any pathogens that remain on the bird.

Last week, Bennie G. Thompson, a member of Congress, warned that the USDA is “unnecessarily endangering the lives of millions of Americans”.

Weak data

Federal pilot projects have been testing the new approach since the late 1990s. Yet critics warn that the results have been far less clear-cut than either the government or the industry has suggested.

“We did a snapshot analysis of how many defects employees were missing at these pilot plants, and found there was no consistency,” Tony Corbo, a senior lobbyist Food & Water Watch, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“In one turkey plant, for instance, there was a 99 percent error rate for one inspection category. We became concerned that the USDA was moving forward too fast with this change.”

The federal government’s official watchdog agency has formally corroborated this conclusion.“The industry says there’s no safety problem, but they’re in denial." -- Tom Fritzsche

The USDA “has not thoroughly evaluated the performance of each of the pilot projects over time,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned in a report published in August, the second time it had come out with such findings.

“GAO identified weaknesses including that training of plant personnel assuming sorting responsibilities on the slaughter line is not required or standardized and that faster line speeds allowed under the pilot projects raise concerns about food safety and worker safety.”

In response to the report, the poultry industry noted that the USDA had already updated its analyses in support of the new rule, and that the sector’s safety record is not linked to processing speeds.

“Over the past 14 years of this pilot program there has been no evidence to substantiate the assertion that increased line speeds will increase injuries,” Ashley Peterson, a vice-president with the National Chicken Council (NCC), a trade group, said in a statement.

“It is not in a poultry company’s best interests to operate at speeds that would harm its workers, and common sense tells you it is not in a company’s best interest to operate at speeds that cannot produce safe and high quality poultry products.”

(The NCC has published responses to criticisms of the proposed regulatory changes here.)

For the moment, the Obama administration appears set on pushing through the new rule, characterising it as a cost-cutting measure.

Under the president’s new budget proposal, released earlier this week, the USDA’s inspections funding would be cut by nearly 10 million dollars, despite the fact that no rule has yet been finalised. Earlier, the federal savings have been estimated even higher – some 90 million dollars over three years.

“The 2015 budget recognises fiscal realities,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Tuesday. “Our leaner workforce continues to find ways to implement increasingly complex programs with fewer resources.”

For major poultry companies, meanwhile, speeding up processing speeds would save more than 250 million dollars a year.

“Most vulnerable” workers

Beyond public health, there are significant civil rights concerns surrounding the new poultry regulations proposal, as well. Last week, a national coalition of groups representing minority and poor workers briefed lawmakers here on concerns that the new rules would exacerbate existing labour problems.

“This proposal has us very concerned, as there are already pending requests with the regulators to require a reduction in these work speeds,” Tom Fritzsche, a staff attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center, a watchdog group, told IPS.

“The health consequences for workers are already very severe, and the concern is that those injury rates are going to go way up. We’re joining other groups in asking whether the same hazards would be so prevalent if the poultry workforce were not made up mostly of women of colour.”

Last year, Fritzsche authored a study on poultry workers in the state of Alabama, three-fourths of whom said they had experienced injury or illness due to their work. Three-quarters also said that the speed of the processing line made their job more dangerous, in addition to broader allegations of egregious safeguards.

Workers “describe what one called a climate of fear within these plants,” the report states. “[E]mployees are fired for work-related injuries or even for seeking medical treatment from someone other than the company nurse or doctor … they describe being discouraged from reporting work-related injuries.”

The report calls poultry workers “among the most vulnerable” in the United States.

“The industry says there’s no safety problem, but they’re in denial. There is a huge and well-documented undercounting in employer-reported data,” Fritzsche says.

“Workers are repeating the exact same motion between 22,000 and 100,000 times per shift, and can develop some permanent disabilities from these repetitive motions. One study out of South Carolina found that 42 percent of workers had carpal tunnel syndrome – that’s astronomically high, and far higher than the industry ever likes to quote.”