After over 10,000 units were spread through the entire Brazilian territory, the Biodigester Septic Tank has crossed borders and has been presented outside Brazil for the first time. At the invitation of the Cooperative Program for the Development of Agricultural Technology in the Southern Cone (PROCISUR), the social technology – and another two that compose the Basic Rural Sanitation System – are the only ones by Embrapa that will be present at the exhibit "Exchange of Innovative Experiences in Family Farming", which will be held on November 24, at the College for Agrarian Sciences of Universidad Nacional de Asunción – San Lorenzo Campus – in Paraguay.

Organized by the Paraguay Ministry of Agriculture (MAG), the Specialized Meeting on Family Farming of Mercosur (REAF), and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), the exhibit aims at facilitating the exchange of successful experiences in innovation policies to improve social-organizational, production, trade and service aspects of family, peasant and indigenous agriculture, among other goals.

The event will be held within the scope of the XXIV Specialized Meeting on Family Farming of Mercosur. Mercosur is an economic bloc created in 1991 that has been discussing innovation for the development of smallholders since 2012.

The promotion of such participatory and open exhibit is based on the prior identification of successful innovation experiences supported by public policy in different REAF member countries, with displays for Mercosur family farmers, peasants, and indigenous communities.

Exhibiting countries include Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Venezuela and Uruguay. Embrapa is going to be part of Knowledge Station 3, destined to "Public innovation services", which gathers other institutes such as Argentina's INTA, Bolivia's INIAF, Chile's INIA, Paraguay's IPTA, Uruguay's INIA, and IICA.

The purpose of such station is to disseminate agricultural technologies, processes, and best practices that are suitable for the sustainable development of family farming and that have been generated, adapted and validated by Procisur institutions responsible for agricultural research and innovation.

Basic sanitation technologies exhibited

In addition to the Biodigester Septic Tank, Carlos Renato Marmo, Embrapa Instrumentation's engineer with a master's degree in Sanitation & Environment, is also going to give a presentation on the Embrapa Chlorinator and the Filter Garden, which comprise the Basic Rural Sanitation System. "It will be an opportunity to share an international award-winning socio-environmental technology by Embrapa with high capillarity and breadth, and to prospect potential partnerships with other Procisur-member Latin American agricultural research centers", Marmo adds.

To assemble a basic set of the technology for a five-person residence, it takes three 1000-L water tanks (preferably made of fiberglass, fiber cement, or another material that cannot be deformed), tubes, connections, valves and spigots. The tubulation from a toilet seat leads to Biodigester Septic Tank, where domestic sewage is treated with the help of a little fresh cow manure and is transformed into organic fertilizer through an anaerobic biodigestion process.