Nations learn new way to stay fed

The lessons learned in Frank Wangnapi's two-month trip to China will last a lifetime for the poor in his homeland Papua New Guinea.

The 45-year-old head of the Division of Natural Resources of the Eastern Highlands Province said he is more than willing to work hard - cutting grass, operating mixing machines and learning to distinguish species of mushrooms in the fields - as part of the training course on a new type of Chinese grass called Juncao, which can be used to cultivate edible and medicinal mushrooms.

The course, organized by the Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University under China's foreign-aid project, attracted 33 trainees from 17 developing countries this year, such as Papua New Guinea, South Africa and Fiji.

Lin Zhanxi (right), a Chinese researcher and inventor of a new type of mushroom-growing technology, harvests oyster mushrooms with locals at a demonstration center for the technology in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. Provided to China Daily

"I'll bring back the magic technology so that our farmers can learn the skills," Wangnapi said.

For many Chinese people, Juncao is an unfamiliar word. Jun means fungus and cao means grass, but the combination of the two Chinese characters can cause confusion.

"The basic idea of the technology is to grow grass and use the plant to cultivate substrates for mushrooms," said Lin Zhanxi, 69, who discovered this mushroom-growing technology.

"We offer training at home and abroad, send our experts to teach local farmers, and we do serve them heart and soul as our brothers," Lin said, who advocates sharing his mushroom-growing technology beyond China for years.

As a fungi expert, Lin said he first came up with the idea of using Juncao grass as a substitute for wood for producing mushrooms in the 1970s.

"Sawdust and wood chips were the conventional raw materials for cultivating mushroom," Lin said. "But it is a dilemma between developing the industry and protecting forests in China."

In 1971, Lin was the first person to suggest the idea of cultivating edible fungi in chopped-up wild grass. After an investigation in rural areas in Fujian province in 1983, he decided to conduct research to put his idea into practice.

"I saw people living on the barren red-soil lands starving, but growing mushrooms using grass is easy to learn and can bring quick returns, enabling local farmers to shake off poverty," he recalled.

At the end of 1986, Lin saw the first Juncao mushroom sprout from a bottle filled with a chopped wild fern in his laboratory.

Since then, Lin and his team have developed the technology by using 45 different kinds of grasses as Juncao fungi grass.

Spreading abroad

The Juncao technology, which has successfully spread across certain rural areas in China since its invention, attracted the attention of the UN Development Programme in 1992 because the project is ideal to combat unemployment, poverty and malnutrition in developing countries.

With the support of the UNDP, Lin's team made a journey to Southeast Asia countries, and found the technology are suitable for such countries as the Philippines and Thailand. He then appealed to the Chinese government to start training courses on the technology as agricultural technical aid for other developing countries.

The first international Juncao technology training seminar was held in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian, in 1995. Over the past 17 years, 49 training courses have been organized by Lin's team to pass on the technology to more than 1,500 trainees from 85 countries.

In countries such as Papua New Guinea, government-aided demonstration centers have been established to localize the technology.

Lin's daughter, Lin Dongmei, is a member of the expert team responsible for the foreign aid program in KwaZulu-Natal Province of South Africa.

According to her notes, a kilogram of oyster mushrooms could be sold for about $12 in a supermarket. The introduction of the Chinese technology has cut the price by almost half, enabling more ordinary people to have the fungi as a high-protein food.

The team also trains other unprivileged local communities to grow Juncao mushroom.

"I saw an unemployed single mother in a village, who can't even read a word, has earned $300 a month after learning how to grow Juncao mushroom, quadrupling her past income and bringing her dignity and hope to send her son to receive a college education," she recalled.

Supported by the Juncao demonstration center, KwaZulu-Natal Province now has five satellite sites to produces raw materials and market produce for growing mushrooms, said Bancedile Buthelezi, a research technician from the province's agriculture department.

"Juncao technology benefits our local economy, saves many poor people's lives and helps to fight land erosion," she said.

The future of Juncao

Although referred to by the trainees as "father of Juncao", Lin Zhanxi agreed that he still does not know all the potential of the technology he invented.

According to Lin, China has 400 million hectares of grassland, three times the area of arable land, and much of the grassland resources have not been fully utilized.

If the technology were applied, the edible mushrooms generated from 0.06 hectare of grassland could offer five times the protein content of hybrid rice grown in the same area, he said.

In addition, his team is undertaking a more ambitious project, to use Juncao grass and the waste fibers for mushroom production as materials for biomass energy.

"We should change the idea that grass is of little use and make it a worldwide strategic resource to fight against the food and energy crises," Lin said.

Another demonstration center is scheduled for construction this year in Fiji with aid from the Chinese government.

Phillip Low, a trainee from the island country in the South Pacific, said Fiji relied on imports of mushrooms in the past, but now it is ready to build an industry from scratch with the help of Chinese experts.

"It would be better to teach a man to fish than to give a man a fish," he said, quoting the Chinese proverb.

Contact the writers at tanzongyang@chinadaily.com.cn and humeidong@chinadaily.com.cn