Yucheng Turns Vegetable Waste into Treasure, Boosting Green Development of the Vegetable Industry

[Introduction·China Vegetable Network]Mealworms can feed on all kinds of vegetable waste, and vegetable trimmings are especially their preferred food. Using mealworms to process vegetable trimmings through their digestive conversion is a biological transformation process that turns low-value vegetable trimmings into high-value-added insect protein, with significant economic benefits.

Recently, a reporter followed staff from the Yucheng Vegetable Bureau into the Yang Family Insect Farming Base in Fangsi Town. Rows of iron shelves held layer upon layer of paper trays; when staff pulled out a tray, a layer of wheat bran was packed densely with small insects, each one wriggling, and when staff put in some chopped vegetable leaves, the small insects immediately began to eat. This is the mealworm breeding plant invested in and built by the only municipal-level insect farming cooperative in Dezhou.

According to the person in charge of the base, this vegetable-eating insect is called the mealworm, commonly known as the breadworm. It is an environmental insect with a broad diet, strong environmental adaptability and high reproductive capacity, and the feces it excretes are a very important organic fertilizer as well as a highly nutritious feed. In addition, mealworms can feed on all kinds of vegetable waste, and vegetable trimmings are especially their preferred food. Using mealworms to process vegetable trimmings through their digestive conversion is a biological transformation process that turns low-value vegetable trimmings into high-value-added insect protein, with significant economic benefits. At present, the base can process 1200 jin of external vegetable trimmings per day, achieving a monthly output of 3 tons of dry product and a monthly profit of more than 20000 yuan, which can be said to both solve the difficult problem of vegetable trimming disposal and realize the “turning of waste vegetable into treasure”.

In recent years, with the rapid development of the vegetable industry, high vegetable yields have also brought the increasingly difficult problem of vegetable trimmings being hard to digest, and large amounts of substandard vegetables and the leaves, roots, stems and fruits produced during vegetable processing have become a new source of environmental pollution in rural areas. To comprehensively treat vegetable trimming pollution, Yucheng has insisted on actively exploring a production model of “comprehensive application and ecological recycling” while doing a good job in vegetable production. At present, in addition to turning waste into treasure by raising insects on vegetable trimmings, the edible mushroom sector in Yucheng has formed a sound ecological cycle of “xylose residue——edible mushrooms——organic fertilizer produced from waste residue”, and the Aolong Vegetable Park is promoting the ecological cycle model of “organic fertilizer produced from xylose residue——organic vegetables produced with organic fertilizer”. These several ecological cycle management models minimize the environmental pollution problems brought by vegetable production, with social benefits exceeding economic benefits, and advance the city's vegetable industry toward green, healthy and harmonious development.