Water Buffalo as a Source of Draft Power, Organic Fertilizer and Enegy Saving

Abstract

The reliance on fossil fuel in agriculture has been causing some problems due to its fluctuating price, limited availability and emission of green house effect gas which is harmful to nature. The use of water buffalo becomes reasonable due to limitations of machine use, thus it is feasible to examine it again as an alternative of labor source, and also as a potential source of biogas, organic fertilizer and energy saving. This research was directed to assess both the energy use water buffalo and machine, build a model to predict the water buffalo labor availability and finally the biogas and fertilizer production potency of the water buffalo. Water buffalo uses 1880,6 MJ/ha with 93% of it comes from grass while machine uses 1201,2 MJ/ha with 95°;', of it comes from fossil fuel (diesel). Using systems dynamics model as a case in Ciampea District, Bogol- Regency,West Java Province of Indonesia, simulation showed that in 2021, with 430,25 animal units of water buffalo, urine and faeces would produce 10.647 kg of N, 76.948 kg of P20S and 1.739.945 kg of K20, substitutes 17'1<, of anorganic, and fully substitutes anorganicP20 S and K20, while the faeces alone would produce 4.595.101 m3 of biogas by 2021. Tractor power is 100'10 replaced by water buffalo since 2020, and 81.381 Iitres of fossil fuel was saved by 2021