The cockroaches are prevented from escaping the farm by a moat filled with fish.
Posted on 09/18/2020 3:16:25 PM PDT by nickcarraway
For a final assignment to cap a five-year posting to China, I never would have chosen this.
But deep inside a cavernous setup of tight corridors and shelves, I'm standing in the dark, sweating profusely as the rain-like sound of millions of cockroaches eating fills the silence.
It's a peaceful ambience that would go well on one of those calming sleep apps.
Everything else about the situation would probably keep people awake.
Around me on walls, the ceiling and floors, cockroaches large and small scurry about, scattering whenever my cameraman Steve Wang points his camera light at them.
This is a roach nest on a massive scale: four industrial-size hangars packed with rows and an elaborate pipe system that pumps food waste collected from restaurants onto the shelves for the roaches to eat.
A dark hallway with cockroaches all over the walls The hangars are kept in perfect condition for cockroaches: dark, warm and filled with food waste.(ABC News: Steve Wang) The lights are off, the temperature is maintained in the high 20s and the humidity is stifling.
"We have 60 small rooms. There are 20 million cockroaches in each room. In total there are 1 billion cockroaches," farm manager Yin Diansong tells me.
"Every day they can eat 50 tonnes of kitchen waste."
Cockroach farms are common in China The project at Zhangqiubei, near the eastern city of Jinan, differs from most other cockroach farms in China.
While a massive facility in the south-west run by a company called 'Good Doctor' grinds up billions of roaches each year for use in Chinese medicine, this project mainly uses them for animal feed.
Two men holding a big pot in a chicken coop The chickens are about to eat a healthy, protein-rich meal of ground-up cockroach.(ABC News: Steve Wang) "If we can farm cockroaches on a large scale, we can provide protein that benefits the entire ecological cycle," says the head of the project, Li Yanrong.
"We can replace animal feeds filled with antibiotics and instead supply organic feed, which is good for the animals and the ground soil."
What started as an experiment to deal with food waste has blossomed into a commercial operation, although Mr Li admits it's still early days and unclear if it will be profitable in the long term.
But the sprawling fields around the cockroach farm already have pigs, ducks, chickens and goats that are feeding on the nutrient-rich cockroach mix.
A fish eating a cockroach The cockroaches are prevented from escaping the farm by a moat filled with fish.(ABC News: Steve Wang) A moat around each hanger is filled with rapacious fish hooked on the taste of cockroach.
They help to ensure the billion or so cockroaches inside don't break out and wreak havoc on the fields nearby.
Cockroaches are not just household pests Largely seen as a pest to be eradicated elsewhere, cockroaches are lucrative money-earners for an estimated 100 cockroach farmers across China.
Crushed cockroaches going by their scientific name Periplaneta Americana are listed as ingredients in various types of Chinese medicine and some medical cosmetics.
They are said to be mainly useful in helping heal scars, while some people eat or drink crushed cockroach medicines that, according to the manufacturers at least, can help reduce the size of tumours.
In some parts of China, the bugs are also eaten although it is very rare, and Mr Li tells me he personally does not cook them up, despite their nutrition.
A man in a polo shirt stands outside a factory building Li Yanrong says the cockroaches are a better, cheaper source of protein for farm animals.(ABC News: Steve Wang) That comes as a relief as he offers us lunch at the Zhangqiubei farm: pork, chicken and fish all raised on nutrient-rich cockroach feed.
Plus, as is customary for guests visiting Shandong, plenty of beer to wash it all down.
Mr Li is knowledgeable about Australia's agricultural conditions and is aware that food waste in Australia largely ends up in landfill.
More than 5 million tonnes each year, according to Australian Government figures.
He thinks the farming process of giving food waste to cockroaches to feed animals for human consumptions could potentially work overseas.
A cockroach running across a pipe The cockroaches could be used to reduce landfill by consuming all the rotting food scraps.(ABC News: Steve Wang) "The ecological cycle is so important, not just locally but worldwide," he says.
It may be a hard sell overcoming the general aversion to cockroaches elsewhere.
But it is a well-run operation that gives me food for thought.
In my last five years in China I'd seen many local ideas flourish abroad, from dockless share bikes to coronavirus containment measures adopted worldwide.
Perhaps cockroach farming could be next.
The cockroaches are prevented from escaping the farm by a moat filled with fish.
Do cockroaches swim? I just swatted a small cockroach outside my house last night.
Very interesting...
Swim? Shtt, they scuba!
What happens when these cockroaches learn to fly?
I could possibly see this as a method of converting biomass into eventual animal feed. But is that cost effective at all on anything but a large scale?
I’ma go ahead and put that in a doubtful category.
The ones in Charleston, South Carolina already know how to fly. I lived there for a few years after being (honorably!) discharged from active duty in the Navy. I never did get used to them. They are called Palmetto Bugs down there.
kinda like the Rand story about the peasant that raised cats and rats fed the rats to the cats, skinned the cats for their pelts and then fed the cats back to the rats...
I would ask my neighbors if they mind if I raise cockroaches commercially but they are out of town this week. Besides, they never asked me if it was OK they raised bees:)
There’s a farm for Democrats?
Yes,they have them in Mobile, AL too. It’s a scary thing to have one of them charge at you.
I thought that’s why we have flying pigs
When I was in the Navy down at Cecil Field in Florida, I woke one night in my barracks when I heard a slight scuffing noise and thought “What the hell is that?”
I turned on my light to find the biggest roach I had ever seen, scurrying across the deck. Without hesitation, I leaped out of my rack, grabbed one of my black boondockers, and ran straight at the thing trying to smash the thing holding the boot by the tip and using the heel as the hammer.
I smacked at it three or four times, missing with each try, and the thing scurried under the crack at the bottom of the door and ran into the hallway.
Too pumped up, and thinking I would never get back to sleep with a monster like THAT lurking in the barracks, I opened the door and ran after it into the hallway in my white, Navy issue boxer shorts, whacking frantically at this thing.
Finally, I scored a blow, and the beast made a loud sickening crack as the heel of the shoe came down on top of it. I froze, and when I lifted the shoe off of the dead thing (or so I thought) it suddenly took to flight!
It scared the crap out of me! I didn’t even know those things had wings and could even fly, but what was more unsettling was the fact that it seemed to be about the size of a softball as it took to the the air, wings beating like mad.
A big, wing-beating thing the circumference of a softball!
OK... I’m never eating anything produced in China ever again, LOL!
Okay that there was funny!!!
But they can’t do the backstroke.
No. Just no! :)
We have them in Charlotte. Huge, fast and they fly like kamikazes. Good news is they can only live inside for a day if you miss catching them.
Yes, we bug spray like crazy.
China probably got the idea after putting piranhas in moats around Uyghur re-education camps.
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