Chen's experimental plant, based in central Henan Province's Luohe where livestock breeding is a core industry, could annually process 8,000 tons of manure and 7,000 tons of urban solid pollutants, and turn out 5,000 tons of organic fertilizers with gross profits of about one million yuan (some US$123,000).

Chen, a senior researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, said in an interview Saturday with Xinhua, they employ aerobiotic microbes to ferment compost to produce fertilizers. Their products could be used for green farm produces.

The average processing circle in the Luohe plant was 12 days, average monetary cost was 30 yuan and average power consumption was 18 kw, which indicate a better performance if compared with its domestic and overseas competitors, Chen acknowledged.

Chen and his team also successfully bade for another fertilizer plant in north Shandong's Shouguang, the country's biggest vegetable producer. The scheduled fertilizer production capability of the Shouguang plant is 130,000 tons one year.

A technological appraisal team mandated by the Ministry of Science and Technology said Chen's technologies could be industrialized in a large scale.

Statistics showed that in 1999 China has a total of 1.9 billion tons of manure pollutants while having 780 million tons of industrial waste. By the year 2020, according to estimation, the scale of livestock breeding industry will be 1.6 times that of the current development.

Zhang Fudao, a principal investigator with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences Soil and Fertilizer Institute, said that fertilization of livestock manure will not only curb pollution, but benefit agricultural farming.

(Xinhua News Agency October 9, 2005)