Home » Opinion » Chinese Views
Environmentally friendly mushroom farm in Jinshan shows future of city agriculture
Print Edition
WORKERS stood on a specially designed lift, picking white button mushrooms in a place you might not expect them to grow — on indoor platforms that resemble five-deck bunk beds.
It was another harvest, one of six that occur in a year. From a seed to a grown-up white button mushroom takes about 50 days at a highly mechanized mushroom farm in Langxia Town of Shanghai’s Jinshan District.
The climate-controlled house provides the right amount of light and moisture for mushrooms to grow. It belongs to Jinshan’s first organic white button mushroom grower and likely is the biggest of its kind in Shanghai.
Agricultural waste
All of LianZhong Professional Mushroom Cooperative’s annual output — more than 3,000 tons — is produced using agricultural waste. Rice straw can be used as bedding while chicken and cattle manure are ideal fertilizer.
As an agricultural byproduct, straw makes up about half of the yield of rice or other cereal crops, leaving a huge quantity of material for disposal. Straw burning, which results in heavy air pollution and produces greenhouse gas emissions, has been banned in Shanghai. But the straw makes ideal bedding for white button mushrooms, said Shen Xinfen, an official at Jinshan Agricultural Technology Promotion Center.
How to cope with huge masses of straw after each rice harvest season is a perennial problem for many farmers. Though the straw can be recycled as resources to enrich the soil, most farmers are not able to accomplish the mission themselves, or find buyers to pay them for the agricultural waste.
But it’s no longer a problem for farmers in Langxia as LianZhong buys most of the straw in town. Considering its expanding business, a major part of Jinshan’s straw will be carried to LianZhong’s yard. In fact, the straw produced each year in Langxia Town has not been enough to meet LianZhong’s demand. It also buys straw from other towns in Jinshan or elsewhere.
“Around half of Jinshan’s straw was used as mushrooms’ bedding as we didn’t have enough time or equipment to collect all of it during the short intervals between two seasons for plantation,” Shen explained. “The situation will be changed if equipment and professional companies are introduced, as happened in the neighboring Jiangsu Province.” That’s why LianZhong also buys straw from Jiangsu. It uses machines to pile up the straw and process it for growing mushrooms. This used to be a very tough job for mushroom farmers using their bare hands. So was the job to dry livestock manure.
The No.1 Document from the central government this year emphasized reducing the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizer and increasing the use of straw and livestock manure as part of the country’s efforts to improve its agricultural ecosystem and environment. Han Changfu, minister of agriculture, made it clear that China’s agricultural resources are very close to the breaking point because of overuse. More than 40 percent of China’s farmland faces deterioration, according to the Central Rural Work Conference. China uses one third of the world’s chemical fertilizer but produces only one fifth of the total output of grains.
LianZhong offers a different solution. The straw LianZhong uses as mushroom bedding becomes fermented and softened when the mushrooms grow on it. When the mushrooms are picked up, the straw beneath can be sold to enrich the soil. Pesticides are rarely used at LianZhong’s mushroom farm.
Localization of technology
Langxia has a decades-long tradition of planting white button mushrooms, but most mushroom farmers in Langxia still use the old method, which not only is less environmentally sustainable but also less competitive in the marketplace. LianZhong’s ambition is not only to offer local mushroom farmers processed raw materials but also technology and contracts.
A research facility is under way in collaboration with the Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences. “We’ve decided to set up the facility to research and develop our own technology and equipment (for mushroom plantation) because those imported from overseas are too expensive,” said Ding Wenfeng, co-founder of the mushroom cooperative.
Experts from the US and Europe make frequent visits to LianZhong. As a temporary solution it works, but it is not sustainable long term. Moreover, the key technologies and machines are still in someone else’s hands.
Most local farmers cannot afford a climate-control mushroom house like the one LianZhong owns. They cannot even afford a foreign expert. “That’s why we have to develop our own,” said Ding.
According to the two co-founders, Chen Lingen and Ding Wenfeng, LianZhong will offer local mushroom farmers everything from seeds to raw materials, from technology to plastic houses to realize standardized, large-scale production. “As a return, the selling price will be unified,” Ding said.
People in Shanghai consume around 30,000 tons of white button mushrooms a year. About one third of that is produced locally. LianZhong seeks to contribute more than 8,000 tons together with contracted farmers in the near future.
LianZhong and the mushroom business in Langxia perhaps epitomizes modern metropolitan agriculture. Surprisingly, a company with 60 employees produces one third of the total local output of white button mushrooms. Even more unusual is that it doesn’t occupy farmland but a block of empty ground, which makes the business feasible in any city’s suburbs.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
