American cockroaches fetch a high price, with a single dried one selling for 0.7 yuan
Original headline: A 47-year-old farmer in Dezhou gets "up close and personal" with cockroaches
At the mere mention of cockroaches, most people want to keep as far away as possible, but 47-year-old Wang Fuming, a farmer from Yaozhan Town in Pingyuan County, has gotten up close and personal with them.
On the morning of the 24th, the reporter walked into the fully enclosed breeding room of the Fumin Special Breeding Base and immediately felt that the indoor temperature and humidity were much higher than outside. "Cockroach breeding requires a temperature between 24 and 33 degrees Celsius and humidity between 75% and 85%," Wang Liangyou told the reporter.
Looking around, the reporter found that the breeding room was divided into small compartments, with the fronts sealed off with fine mesh to prevent the cockroaches from flying out. Following the faint beam of a flashlight, the reporter saw reddish-brown cockroaches hiding between layer upon layer of concrete partitions. "Cockroaches all like to stay in dim environments and start flying as soon as they see light," Wang Liangyou said while gently lifting two concrete partitions inside a compartment, sending cockroaches scurrying quickly to hide between two other concrete partitions.
Wang Liangyou told the reporter that cockroaches reproduce extremely fast, with a single insect able to produce more than 10 offspring, and that the current 300 sq m workshop houses nearly 50,000 cockroaches.
Everyone avoids cockroaches on sight, so why would anyone be willing to get up close and personal with them? Do they harm the environment?
"This cockroach is not that cockroach. The common cockroach at home is the German cockroach, native to Asia and later spread to all temperate regions of the world, and it is considered the filthiest household pest. What we breed is the American cockroach, scientific name Periplaneta americana; it has higher requirements for temperature and humidity, and large-scale artificial breeding has already begun in southern China," Wang Liangyou explained.
Most importantly, the Periplaneta americana that Wang Liangyou breeds also has high medicinal value. "The public should have a fresh understanding of them. After these cockroaches grow up, we scald them to death with boiling water and then dry them for sale to pharmaceutical manufacturers. Many of the high-tech new drugs currently developed, such as 'Kangfuxin' and other burn medicines, all use compounds extracted from the American cockroach."
Wang Liangyou began breeding American cockroaches in the spring of this year, and this is also the first cockroach breeding base in our city. In recent years, due to the demand for drug production, many pharmaceutical manufacturers have purchased cockroach powder in large quantities, and the price of dried cockroaches has risen to ten times what it was.
"The price of dried product from one jin of cockroaches has risen from about 15 yuan 10 years ago to more than 140 yuan now," Wang Liangyou told the reporter. "The current market price for one dried cockroach is about 0.7 yuan."
Although "Xiaoqiang" is not a picky eater, does not get sick and has strong reproductive capacity, Wang Liangyou told the reporter that breeding cockroaches still requires professional guidance. "One is the survival rate of cockroach eggs, another is differences among varieties, and another is various breeding techniques." According to Wang Liangyou, he himself tried large-scale breeding after receiving study and training from a professional breeding cooperative in Jinan. (Reporter Wang Zhiqiang, correspondents Zhang Dawei and Liu Shuyi)