Alleviating penury with grass tech
‘Father of Juncao’ Lin Zhanxi helps PNG, other nations in poverty fight and sustainable growth
At about one o’clock in the morning on Dec 13, 2000, the telephone in Lin Zhanxi’s home in Fuzhou suddenly rang sharply, breaking the quietness.
Lin’s family members wondered what the matter could be as they woke up from sleep, filled with anxiety. They later learned that it was an emergency call from a Fujian province experts’ group that was stationed in Papua New Guinea to assist the Pacific island nation in poverty alleviation work.
A group member informed the family that Lin, who was part of the PNG work team, had a relapse of heart disease, probably due to overwork for long periods of time.
“Professor Lin’s hands turned numb, his feet (got) cold, and he even passed out several times,” said the person on the other side of the phone, mentioning there was no hospital or pharmacy near the base where the group was working. At one point, it seemed that Lin’s very survival was uncertain.
Lin, then 57, from Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, was staying in PNG to spread Juncao technology to help people in the island nation fight poverty and live a better life. Before making the long and tiring journey from Fujian to PNG, Lin had sprained an ankle, adding to existing health woes.
Fortunately, a minister in the host country learned about it and quickly sent his personal doctor to treat Lin, helping save the life of the scientist who has often been referred to as the “father of Juncao”.
In Chinese, jun refers to mushrooms or fungi, and cao means grass or herbaceous plant. Put together, the two characters refer to a technology that grows nutritious mushrooms using chopped grasses without cutting trees.
When it comes to poverty relief efforts in the developing world, small is the new big. And Juncao, a group of wild grasses, are considered one of China’s most significant contributions to the world’s sustainable development, with multiple uses being shared by people in 106 countries including Fiji, Rwanda, Zambia, Central African Republic and Egypt, to help tackle food issues and desertification.
It has worked miracles for Chinese scientists who are cultivating it as a substrate for growing edible and medicinal mushrooms or as forage for livestock, as well as using it as green barrier to stop sand dunes from advancing.
“The basic idea of the technology is to grow grass and use the plant to cultivate substrates for mushrooms,” said Lin, who first discovered this mushroom-growing technology in 1986.
As a fungi expert, Lin said he first came up with the idea in the 1970s of using Juncao grass as a substitute for wood for producing mushrooms.
“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.”
Lin said that in the 1980s, the mushroom industry developed rapidly in China and became an important way for farmers to escape poverty and gain a better living. But farmers cut down as many trees as they could, even small trees, to cultivate mushrooms.
To avoid the conflict between mushroom industry development and forest resources protection, Lin, after an investigation in rural areas in Fujian province in 1983, decided to conduct research. He tested on wild grass instead of using wood logs or the sawdust of broad-leaved trees as substrate.
At the end of 1986, Lin saw the first Juncao mushroom sprout from a bottle filled with a chopped wild fern in his laboratory.
Lin and his team developed the technology by using at least 54 different kinds of grasses as Juncao.
The scientist noted that 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 is applied, edible mushrooms generated from a 0.06 hectare of grassland could offer five times the protein content of hybrid rice grown in the same area, he said.
The agricultural technology has been widely promoted at home through China’s poverty alleviation projects in western areas including Xinjiang Uygur, Tibet and Ningxia Hui autonomous regions, since 1991.
Juncao grass is also regarded as a response to climate change. It has been used to control soil erosion or desertification as it can develop roots in deserts and grow fast in different environments.
Within 100 days or so after planting, it starts to stop shifting sand and improve soil quality. The soil thus improved with Juncao technology can then be used to grow cash crops.
On the banks of the Yellow River, China’s second-longest river, a 1,000-kilometer long green barrier is set to be completed in 2021, with a mass planting of Juncao grass, to treat the heavily eroded land and protect it from sand invasion.
With a history of progressive growth in 35 years, Juncao technology, which has successfully spread across certain rural areas in China since its invention, attracted the attention of the United Nations Development Programme in 1992.
The first international Juncao technology training seminar was held in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian province, in 1995. Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University alone had provided training to some 7,000 foreigners by 2018.
Despite his age, Lin has often traveled far to help people in developing countries learn about the benefits of this agricultural technology.
“The first time I went to Papua New Guinea in 1997, I realized how people there were struggling with extreme poverty,” Lin said.
Juncao technology was first introduced into PNG from China in 1997. At that time, a tribe chief in the island nation knelt down before Lin to thank him for bringing the technique to save them from starvation. The tribe people celebrated all night long, and members of the Chinese team were so touched that they decided to stay in PNG and help the people shake off poverty.
Despite finding themselves in a place without electricity or modern devices, the team members worked there for eight years to teach locals how to cultivate and use the grass. At night, they did research under the flickering, dim light of kerosene lamps.
On one occasion in 1998, Lin nearly lost his life. During a trip to a Juncao demonstration site in PNG, the team encountered a gunman on the way. “Luckily the local driver got help from a tribal leader to stop him,” Lin recalled.
The hard work from Lin has won acclaim for China. After introducing the grass and its cultivation technology to PNG for more than 20 years to help local farmers raise livestock and grow edible mushrooms, China in 2018 signed an agreement with the Pacific nation in relation to use of grass technology. It marked China’s 12th international aid program in poverty relief using the grass.
“We hope the newly inked agreement will help double the agricultural production capacity and farmers’ incomes in the Eastern Highlands province of Papua New Guinea,” said Lin.
Around the 2010s, Lin’s daughter, Lin Dongmei, was a member of the expert team responsible for foreign aid programs 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 cut the price by almost half, enabling more ordinary people to have the fungi as a high-protein food.
“I saw an unemployed single mother in a village, who couldn’t even read a word, has earned $300 a month after learning how to grow Juncao mushrooms,” she recalled.
As a practical technology for green development, Juncao has spread rapidly to more than 100 countries that are taking part in China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
The application of Juncao technology has helped BRI countries and regions in their efforts to meet sustainable development goals, and enabled many people to overcome poverty and live a better life, said Ma Zhaoxu, China’s permanent representative to the UN in 2017.
“Juncao industry gradually takes shape, with Juncao grass as the core,” Lin said at a high-level meeting at the UN headquarters in New York in 2019.
Under the China-UN Peace and Development Fund announced by President Xi Jinping, a Juncao technology project was implemented in 2017, Ma noted. The project helps many developing countries strengthen capacity in implementing SDGs, making concrete contribution to synergies between the BRI and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.