How Earthworms Activate a Green Circular Planting and Breeding Chain
May, when the lilacs are in full bloom, is a busy time.
In Greenhouse No. 38 of Baosu Village, Huangheshao Town, Saihan District, the bright red tomatoes look especially tempting under the sunlight. Wu Yonghe, a villager busy picking them, wore a big smile, because under the leadership of the village's "first secretary", a trial of raising earthworms under plastic film in the gaps of vegetable plots fertilized with green manure had been carried out. Taking the example of spreading 80 kg of earthworms per mu of land, it is estimated that, counting the three items of earthworm income, increased vegetable output, and reduced fertilizer input, the additional income per greenhouse would be at least around 5,000 yuan. Wu Yonghe said that if the trials in these two greenhouses succeed, it would not only give the tomatoes a "double insurance" of organic fertilizer, but also open up a fully closed green circular economy industrial chain based on projects such as making organic green manure from vegetable straw, growing overwintering fruit vegetables, raising earthworms in vegetable greenhouses, feeding free-range chickens with earthworms, raising earthworms with chicken manure, growing organic vegetables with earthworm castings, and the "urban family vegetable greenhouse adoption" program.
This spring, Yun Sen was half joyful and half worried. As the village's "first secretary" sent from the Municipal Economic and Information Commission, what made him joyful was that the organic cucumbers, oil gourds and other vegetables trial-planted with green manure for the villagers last winter had already been connected with the market, and some traders were willing to come to the village to buy them; the free-range eggs produced through the introduced earthworm breeding had also succeeded and were favored by consumers. What worried him was how to promote green manure planting and earthworm breeding on a large scale in the village, form a circular economy industrial chain, and make full use of some idle greenhouses.
Baosu Village, more than ten kilometers from the city proper, is a village mainly engaged in vegetable planting and supplemented by breeding. Although many vegetable greenhouses had been built in the village to drive the villagers' development, it was difficult to connect with the market due to relatively lacking planting experience and the failure to concentrate vegetable growing into a scale, and coupled with the constraints of the region's climate conditions and the influence of vegetable prices in Shandong and Hebei, many greenhouses were left idle.
As early as September 2014, when he was stationed in the village as the "first secretary", facing the village's current situation, Yun Sen, through visits and study, introduced in June 2015 an organic liquid fertilizer fermented from discarded plant stems, leaves, roots and the like into Baosu Village for use in planting the existing vegetables, and the trial results were gratifying. Afterward, Yun Sen had new ideas. On the one hand, he helped the farmers establish a professional cooperative to solve the problem of selling agricultural products; on the other hand, he used three models including "private customization" to rent out vegetable greenhouses and help the villagers increase income. At the same time, Yun Sen paid out of his own pocket to go out for inspections and introduced an earthworm breeding project to develop a circular industrial chain, driving the villagers to use green manure and earthworm castings to grow organic vegetables, use earthworms to raise earthworm egg-laying hens, and then use earthworms to solve the harmless treatment of dairy cow manure.
Yun Sen said that earthworms are really good things: their castings can not only be used as organic fertilizer, but the earthworms themselves can also process kitchen waste and can even be sent directly to pharmaceutical factories to extract the ingredients needed in medicines. At present, a cooperation agreement has already been reached with a livestock enterprise to develop the earthworm industry, and an intention cooperation agreement has also been signed with Heling County to carry out earthworm breeding on 1,000 mu of land provided by the county.