Turning fruit tree branches into organic fertilizer saves on fertilizer costs and improves quality

In recent years, Ji County in Shanxi has been promoting the quality upgrading of apples, and began implementing “thinning and interval cutting” in dense orchards throughout the county. Most of the resulting discarded apple tree branches were left by fruit growers as waste in fields, at the edges of villages and in open spaces by courtyards, becoming a major problem in the current rural environmental improvement effort.

After Xie Zhigang, who had been making a career elsewhere, returned home and saw the environmental problems caused by discarded apple tree branches, he began to think about solving this problem. He traveled as far as Malaysia and Taiwan, China, for inspections lasting as long as 6 months. Finally, after analysis and comparison, he signed contracts to introduce Taiwan agricultural technology and a team of agricultural experts, returned to Ji County, and began trying to process discarded apple tree branches into organic fertilizer.

“We crush and process the branches, then mix them with livestock and poultry manure at a 1:1 ratio, add organic bacteria, and ferment for about 60 days, and finally it is processed into finished organic fertilizer. In the past, the price of one ton of organic fertilizer applied by fruit growers was generally around 3000 yuan, while using 1 ton of branches can process 1 ton of apple organic fertilizer, and each ton requires only 600 yuan in processing fees.” Xie Zhigang said.

According to Yu Yanshan, head of the township of Zhongduo in the county, fertilizer application and bagging are currently the main cost investments in apple production, and soil is a key factor affecting apple quality. Because the earlier use rate of chemical fertilizers was relatively high, some orchards have already experienced varying degrees of decline in soil fertility, hardening, and other problems. The best way to solve this problem is to increase the proportion of organic fertilizer applied, but organic fertilizer is expensive. “By processing discarded apple tree branches into organic fertilizer, there is almost no cost for fruit growers.”

Xie Zhigang registered and established Shanxi Jinfunian Agricultural Technology Development Co., Ltd. and the Ji County Guangcai Organic Fertilizer Processing Professional Cooperative. At present, soil testing and formulated fertilization has been completed in 3 townships, and a model for processing discarded apple tree branches into organic fertilizer has been established with more than 200 fruit-growing households in 4 townships.

For fruit growers, with apple planting following the standard of 1 ton of organic fertilizer per mu, 5 mu of land can save about 10,000 yuan in costs. Dou Xinghua, director of the Ji County Fruit Tree Research Institute, believes that if organic fertilizer is used to promote soil improvement, raise apple quality, and drive price increases, then for Ji County's 300,000 mu of apples, this will bring benefits of another order of magnitude.

Yan Haibin