"China Grass" contributes to world poverty reduction

On November 25, Lin Zhanwei, a deputy to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and inventor of fungus technology, and her daughter Lin Dongmei spoke about "Fungus Grass Happy Grass" at the "Writing the Chapter of Youth on the Motherland" online theme publicity and interactive guidance activity. Jiao Yan/Photo

To remember the help from China, a Papua New Guinea minister changed his daughter's name to "fungus" and published it in a special newspaper.

Lin Zhanxi, a researcher at Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University and chief scientist of the National Engineering Research Center for Mycology, recently told the story at the "Party Representative Channel" during the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which caused heated public discussion.

"Fungus" is actually "circled" by many countries. On November 25, Lin Zhanxi said in an exclusive interview with a reporter from China Youth Daily that people call fungi grass "Chinese grass". Some of the "fungus fans" changed their names to fungus, and some used fungus grass to name their children to hope for a better life.

Lin Zhanxi has personally experienced the life of not having enough to eat and wear without warmth, and a cotton coat has been worn by three generations. The young Lin Zhanxi saw in the movie that the Soviet Union harvested rice and wheat using machinery, while wheat was cut one by one in the mainland at that time. He had a wish to have good technology in the future, so that farmers would not work so hard and live a good life.

The college entrance examination fills in the volunteers, and Lin Zhanxi chooses all the departments of agronomy of the College of Agriculture. In 1968, Lin Zhanxi graduated from Fujian Agricultural College majoring in agronomy, and in 1971, he went to Fujian Sanming District Mycological Research Institute to engage in the research and development and production of edible fungi.

In the 80s of the 20th century, Lin Zhanxi came to Changting County in western Fujian with the Fujian Provincial Science and Technology Poverty Alleviation Delegation. Initially, people there made a living through the most common basswood shiitake cultivation method, competing to cut trees and grow shiitake mushrooms, exacerbating local soil erosion. It takes 15~20 years to replant the tree and grow.

This is the "fungus forest contradiction" facing the world. Lin Zhanxi tried to find the ideal grass species to replace wood. He thought of his hometown, Longyan City, Fujian Province, where the mountains are full of mountains. Lin Zhanxi said that this weed has a high degree of lignification, the rod is relatively hard, and the growth rate is fast and sustainable. After comprehensive observation, experimentation and demonstration, the weeds became rare mountains, and shiitake mushrooms successfully grew on the mangxuan.

In 1992, the fungus won the gold medal of the Geneva International Invention Competition Exhibition Exhibition. This is the opportunity that Lin Zhanxi borrowed more than 30,000 yuan and insisted on participating in the exhibition. He believes that this is a valuable thing for the development of human society, and hopes to let the world know that this is an invention of Chinese. Lin Zhanxi also insisted on using the Hanyu Pinyin "Juncao" as the translation of "fungus".

Some Americans offered him a high salary, more than 1,000 times the combined salary of him and his wife in China. Lin Zhanxi said that the original intention of inventing this technology was to help the people get rid of poverty. The fungus technology is unique to China and must remain in China.

"If you have the technology, you may become a millionaire or even a billionaire, but this is not really rich, only thousands of farmers, who become rich with my technology, are really rich." Lin Zhanxi said.

In the poverty alleviation of Fujian and Ningxia, Lin Zhanxi overcame the problem of unsatisfactory mushrooms in Ningxia, and creatively proposed to stagger the mushroom production season in the main producing areas of Fujian and produce out-of-season mushrooms. Lin Zhanxi never forgets the joy of an old Hui man in Ningxia who had his first income in 1999, and before that, the old man had never seen a 100 yuan bill.

Lin Zhanxi is the prototype of the agricultural expert in the TV series "Mountains and Seas", leading the people of Minning Town to get rid of poverty and become rich, which is also his dream when he was young. He also applied the experience and technology gained in poverty alleviation to other developing countries to bring fungi to the world.

In the 90s of the 20th century, the Rufa district of Papua New Guinea was still in a state of slash-and-burn. To promote fungus technology, just a sterilization boiler requires tens of thousands of yuan, and some reach 560,000 yuan. Lin Zhanxi and the other four people have an aid fund of 200,000 yuan a year, and it is difficult to promote production by conventional methods.

They came up with the idea that welding them with 3 empty gasoline drums, adding a piece of plastic film, and a few hundred dollars would solve it.

In China, the use of mushrooms to grow mushrooms needs to be carried out at a certain cultivation temperature, and in Papua New Guinea, air conditioning temperature control cannot be achieved, Lin Zhanxi designed a simple culture room: first use "soil adjustment", dig a planting trench in the ground, the temperature is just right, if the temperature is too high, then use "water adjustment", spray water to cool down.

Lin Zhanxi said that the most difficult thing in the technological revolution is to see whether the people can master technology. Therefore, in various regions, Lin Zhanxi insists on adapting measures to local conditions, simplifying because of the ugly, and localizing and simplifying the technology, and the simpler the better, so that the local villagers can understand it as soon as they read it, learn it and do it.

From the southeast coast to the northwest desert, from the South Pacific island countries to the African continent, fungus technology has taken root in 106 countries, and more than 10,000 people have cultivated the backbone of fungus technology. They translated the fungus technology into 18 languages and spread it in various places, and the poverty alleviation experience obtained by the fungus technology was used in the cause of international poverty reduction, providing a new Chinese plan for building a community with a shared future for mankind.

In 2017, fungus technology was listed as a key promotion project of the China-United Nations Peace and Development Fund, and is contributing "Chinese wisdom" and "Chinese strength" to the implementation of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Lin Zhanxi, who is nearly eighty years old, is still working on the front line of fungus research and promotion. He found that at present, in many parts of the country, the shiitake mushroom industry alone still consumes about 20 million cubic meters of wood a year. "The spread of new technologies is not so easy to spread if it is not translated into government action."

In Lin Zhanxi's view, fungus technology has significant ecological, economic and social benefits. Economic benefits are more intuitive, but the role of social and ecological benefits needs to be led by the government.

As early as when Ningxia in the mainland and Rwanda, an African country, were helping to alleviate poverty, Lin Zhanxi began to explore the use of fungus for ecological management in the Yellow River Basin, and after years of verification, he finally selected a new fungus variety that can grow in the Gobi Desert and has a mu capacity of 15-20 tons. Lin Zhanxi hopes that it can play a greater role in ecological governance and help the construction and high-quality development of the ecological security barrier of the Yellow River.

Nowadays, fungi have started from the traditional cultivation of edible fungi with grass instead of wood, and have expanded to various industries such as ecological treatment, grass instead of grain, livestock raising, board production, and papermaking.

Lin Zhanxi said that he hopes to accelerate the construction of interdisciplinary disciplines and scientific and technological innovation of fungi and grass with the support of relevant departments, and provide more scientific basis and strength for poverty alleviation and poverty reduction around the world. He also hopes that the fungus technology can further consolidate and expand the results of poverty alleviation and play an active role in rural revitalization.

Zhongqing Daily / Zhongqing Net reporter Zhang Yi Source: China Youth Daily

Source: China Youth Daily