Cockroach farming (nonfiction)
Cockroach farming is a specific type of insect farming that involves the breeding of cockroaches as livestock in controlled facilities. Such farming is a sizable industry in China where large buildings are home to millions of insects. They can be raised as a food source for humans (entomophagy) and lizards, or sold to the pharmaceutical industry for use in medicine. The cockroaches are often killed in vats of boiling water before being dried, and, depending on their purpose, they may be crushed, ready for processing. Prospective farmers are able to obtain "how-to" kits to begin their farming venture, while larger companies are able to produce billions of cockroaches every year.
The LA Times reports:
Wang Fuming, at his farm in Jinan, is the largest cockroach producer in China (and thus probably in the world), with six farms populated by an estimated 10 million cockroaches.
It's not exactly a fortune, but the $10,000 she brings in annually selling cockroaches is decent money for her hometown in rural Sichuan province, and won her an award last year from local government as an "Expert in Getting Wealthy."
"Now I'm teaching four other families," Zou said. "They want to get rich like me."
But inexperienced farmers can get into trouble, as Wang Pengsheng (no relation to fellow roach farmer Wang) found out after his cockroaches staged the Great Escape.
He had opened his farm just six months earlier in a newly constructed building that municipal code officials complained was too close to protected watershed land. At noon on Aug. 20, while workers were out for lunch, a demolition crew knocked down the building. The roaches made a run for it.
"They didn't know I had cockroaches in there. They wouldn't have demolished the building like that if there were cockroaches that would get out," Wang Pengsheng said in a telephone interview.
After discovering the flattened building and homeless roaches scurrying among the rubble, he tried to corral the escapees but was unsuccessful. He called in local health officials, who helped him exterminate the roaches. Wang said he has received about $8,000 in compensation from local government and hopes to use the money to rebuild his farm elsewhere.
In the News
Fiction cross-reference
Nonfiction cross-reference
External links:
- Cockroach farming @ Wikipedia