CHANGCHUN, May 6 (Xinhua) -- Straw, a former agricultural waste and big source of air pollution via open-air incineration in northeast China, has turned into a saleable export to Japan.
Panshan Village, located on the Songliao Plain, northeast China's Jilin Province, has long relied on rice cropping. Today, rice straw is being processed and exported to Japan as a favorite feed for wagyu, a sought-after Japanese beef.
Rice straw can be sold at 200 yuan (about 28 U.S. dollars) per tonne to the processing plant, which means a hectare of land can yield an income of over 1,000 yuan from straw.
As a largely agricultural country, China produces around 900 million tonnes of crop straws every year, according to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
Farmers traditionally burned straw after harvests to clear the field, which was blamed as a major source of air pollution in rural China.
The burning of straw has been banned, and its comprehensive utilization has become a priority.
According to the "No.1 central document" in 2019, an annual policy statement released by Chinese central authorities, the country will lift its straw utilization rate to at least 85 percent by 2020.
Unlike corn straw which can be crushed and reused to fertilize the land, rice straw could only be used as firewood.
"Tonnes of straw was left in the filed, and the only method was to burn them away," said Yu Jianping, a village official.
After discussing with Liu Xinghua, a local villager who used to run a meadow business, they found a new way out.
Rice straws in Panshan is fiber-rich and high in minerals and various nutrients, which meet the needs of some Japanese wagyu cattle breeding enterprises. With the support of the local government, Liu soon rented a plant in the village to process the straw.
Now the plant has "swallowed" most of the straw in the village, and Yu plans to expand their production. "I hope we can sell more straw to Japan and make the life of local villagers sweeter," said Yu. Enditem
