A lot of people are disgusted with maggots as they are usually found in foul-smelling trash bags and other disgusting things. In Southwestern China, however, maggots are seen useful as they consume trayfuls of leftover meat, vegetables, and fruits on an unusual farm.
In an article published by AFP, maggots are described as something that is "not a pretty sight but the gluttonous larvae could help China eat away something far uglier". Currently, the country is having problems with a mountain of food waste.
Maggots, which are native to the Americans, could eat food waste double their weight every day, experts said. A farm in Sichuan province in China turns these bugs into high-protein animal feed and their feces in an organic fertilizer.
"These bugs are not disgusting because they are for managing food waste [and by that,] you have to look at this from another angle," Hu Rong said. Rong serves as the manager of the farm near the city of Pengshan that uses maggots.
The supply is also not a problem as there is no shortage of maggots and the food for these bugs would be a feast for them. In an article published by Channel News Asia, each person in China, a country populated by 1.4 billion people, throws away about 30 kilos of food per year.
Hu said that on average, one kilo of maggots could eat two kilos of rubbish in just four hours. For their bugs' food, he buys food waste from Chengwei Environment. Chengwei Environment is a company that collects food waste from over 2,000 restaurants in the city of Chengdu.
Chengwei Environment Director Wang Jinhua said that the maggots eat so much, the only thing that would be left is the food's skeleton. "If you put a fish in there, the only thing that comes out is its white skeleton," he said.
According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year gets lost or wasted. Meanwhile, some 870 million people are going hungry. The maggots used in the Chinese farm mentioned before could help in making fertilizers and producing food for hungry people.
