The villages nearest to Ammiq wetland (Lebanon’s major Ramsar site) are Ghazza and Mansoura, where more than 50 dairy cattle farms are dumping their runoff and cow manure directly into the Litany river and waterways surrounding the wetland. The farmers in that area refrain from using the cow manure on their agricultural lands for fear of weed seeds and bacterial contamination, and they prefer to use chemical fertilizers. The main objectives of the project is therefore to reduce or stop the practice of dumping cow manure into waterways leading to Ammiq wetland, through teaching local dairy farmers how they can use thermal composting to turn the cow manure into grade A compost free of weed seeds and harmful pathogens.

Since this is a micro project with limited budget, we will teach the dairy farmers how to use the tried and tested “Berkely Method” of thermal composting to produce a grade A compost that they can sell or use on their agricultural land instead of chemical fertilizers.

Based on the pilot results at Taha farm, we will provide four training sessions on the importance of wetland preservation and how to transform raw cow manure into grade A compost, targeting dairy cattle farmers nearest to Ammiq and the Litani River (target 40 people, 10 per training session). The project will also provide assistance to the farmers in marketing, in order to help them make money from selling their composted cow manure, to ensure the continuity of the project (around 40 people involved).