How is vegetable waste turned into treasure? This is how Yucheng, Shandong does it

Recently, the reporter followed staff from the Yucheng Vegetable Bureau into the Yangshi Insect Farming Base in Fangsi Town. On rows of iron racks were stacked layer upon layer of paper trays. Staff pulled out a paper tray, and inside a layer of wheat bran were densely packed small insects, wriggling one by one. Staff put in some chopped vegetable leaves, and the small insects immediately began to eat. This is the yellow mealworm breeding factory invested in and built by the only municipal-level insect farming professional cooperative in Dezhou.

According to the person in charge of the base, this vegetable-eating insect is called the yellow mealworm, commonly known as the bread worm. It is an environmental insect with a wide diet, strong environmental adaptability and high reproductive capacity. Its excreted feces are a very important organic fertilizer and also a feed with high nutritional value. In addition, yellow mealworms can feed on all kinds of vegetable waste, and tail vegetables are especially a food they like to eat. Treating tail vegetables through the passage and transformation of yellow mealworms is a biological conversion process, turning low-value tail vegetables into high-value-added insect protein, with significant economic benefits. At present, the base can process 1,200 jin of social tail vegetables every day, achieving a monthly output of 3 tons of dry product and a monthly profit of more than 20,000 yuan. It can be said that it not only solves the difficult problem of tail vegetable treatment, but also realizes the “turning waste into treasure” of garbage vegetables.

In recent years, with the rapid development of the vegetable industry, high vegetable yields have also brought the increasingly difficult problem of digesting tail vegetables. A large amount of defective vegetables and the leaves, roots, stems and fruits produced during vegetable processing have become a new source of rural environmental pollution. To comprehensively treat tail vegetable pollution, Yucheng City has persisted in actively exploring a production model of “comprehensive application, ecological circulation” while doing a good job in vegetable production. At present, in addition to turning waste into treasure by raising insects with tail vegetables, the edible fungi sector in Yucheng City has formed a benign ecological cycle of “xylose residue——edible fungi——organic fertilizer produced from waste residue.” The Aolong Vegetable Park is promoting the ecological circulation model of “organic fertilizer produced from xylose residue——organic vegetables produced with organic fertilizer.” These ecological circulation management models minimize the environmental pollution problems brought by vegetable production. Their social benefits exceed their economic benefits, promoting the city's vegetable industry to achieve green, healthy and harmonious development.