Seven ways to turn straw into money, instead of burning it

Making fertilizer, animal feed, mushroom cultivation . are simple ways to help farmers earn money from agricultural waste.

After each harvest season, farmers often burn straw at the field causing environmental pollution. While this is a very valuable material source, it can bring high profit if you make use of mushroom, fertilizer or sell.

Sell ​​straw

Given that burning straw will be toxic to the atmosphere, increase climate change, agricultural expert - Professor Vo Tong Xuan - advises her children to stop this behavior. At Vietnam's No. 1 granary - Cuu Long River Delta, rice straw used to be wasted in the field, but now many households take advantage of bringing it to sell, while earning more income to protect the environment.

On average, one hectare of fields will earn 2.5-3 million VND of straw. Many businesses buy straw for export mushrooms or fertilizer. Since 2015, Song Hau Farm (Can Tho) has a project to process export straw to Japan as animal feed.

For transportation far away, straw is used by people to roll into a round machine, each roll is about 18,000 to 20,000 VND; Outsourcing is half cheaper. In the drought season, food for cattle is inadequate, with a time of straw up to 40,000-45,000 VND per roll, people are not enough to provide.

Fertilizer

After the harvest season, many households buried straw in the soil as a source of fertilizer for the next crop. This helps maintain nitrogen and carbon in the soil. This is a common method implemented by people in many localities.

However, according to biotechnology expert Dr. Le Van Tri, the most optimal is to use bio-products to treat straw into organic fertilizer. Preparations help accelerate the process of decomposing organic matter in the post-harvest straw, while increasing organic microorganisms to help improve soil.

According to calculations, if using a good biological product, in one ton of organic fertilizer from rice straw will have 10 kg of nitrogen; 9.5 kg of phosphorus and 21 kg of potassium. "If the whole amount of straw after harvest of the whole country is about 44-45 million tons, it will bring 20 million tons of organic fertilizer. People do not have to spend 200,000 tons of nitrogen, 190,000 tons of phosphate and 460,000 tons of potassium. This will save nearly VND 11,000 billion, "said Dr. Tri.

The Institute of Biotechnology (Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology) has also successfully researched microbiological technology to treat straw into organic fertilizer for production, cost-saving and environmentally friendly. . According to the scientist's calculations, for every ton of organic fertilizer from straw, farmers save nearly VND 500,000.

Growing mushrooms

According to scientists, mushroom cultivation is considered one of the most bio-efficient methods of utilizing rice straw. Mushrooms are very rich in protein and products are popular.

Currently, the model of mushroom growing has been applied by many localities by bringing a significant source of income, improving living standards. Having family income from mushrooms every year up to tens of million.

Making straw mushrooms, people do not need fertilizer because straw when decomposing enough to provide nutrition for growing mushrooms. Growers also do not spend much on investment, but need diligence, spend a lot of time monitoring temperature and humidity.

Fodder

Ben Tre, Tra Vinh and Long An now raise cows on a large scale, so the demand for rice straw is very high.

A study on the use and management of straw in 2011 indicated that rice straw contains energy and nutrients that cattle can digest. On the other hand, the amount of heat generated in the herbivore's intestines, so digesting straw may be helpful in maintaining body temperature in the cold winter.

However, experts recommend that only part of the straw be used for cattle because there is no high nutrient content and the stubble can cause injury to animals.

After each harvest season, people burn copper to take advantage of ash as fertilizer.(Photo: Phuoc Tuan).

Production of ethanol

The Vietnam Petroleum Institute in 2013 announced the study of turning rice straw and by-products such as rice husk and bagasse into bio-oil liquid fuel (bio-oil). With bio-oil liquid recovery efficiency, Vietnam's rice straw sources can produce 31 million tons of bio-oil per year as an alternative fuel, and can be upgraded to produce petrol and oil. Diezel in the near future.

If applied to practice, people have more income thanks to supplying rice straw to fuel production companies, and solving the problem of copper burning.

Paper production

A company in Virginia state (USA) has been collecting rice straw for many years as a raw material for paper production. Paper products are often darker but very good quality. China or Thailand have also implemented this production technology for a long time.

Experts recommend that Vietnam should take advantage of rice straw in the above way, at first it can produce paper or paper carton with cheap price. This also helps Vietnam not to import pulp.

Buy industrial incinerators

Scientist at Hanoi National University (Hanoi National University) said that people can burn rice straw, get ash for farming, but should invest in industrial incinerators to regulate temperature and help smoke less spread, avoiding photochemical blindness in urban areas, or causing traffic accidents due to limited visibility.