The planting areas of cotton in Weixian, which is known as the “sea of cotton south of Hebei”, is 800 thousand mu (53.3 hectares). To make full use of its resources, Weixian changed the growing methods of cotton from single cropping to multiple cropping, improving cotton processing and recycling the cotton waste. Cotton garment processing and deep cotton processing have become the two main advanced industries and make up over 40 per cent of the income and taxes of the industry above county scale.
Growing methods of cotton were changed from single cropping to multiple cropping to improve efficiency. Farmers have developed multiple cropping of cotton melon and cotton vegetable areas to 0.18 million mu. They planted different kinds of cottons, which can be grown on a large scale, along with onions, watermelon, side crops and fruit trees by various uses of the farmland together with plastic membranes, and gradually formed an effective system of multiple cropping.
Cotton processing has been improved from light to deep, completing the cotton industry chain. In recent years, Weixian developed cotton industrialization management, shifting from planting, purchasing and light processing to cotton garment processing and deep cotton processing. Till now, 20 local industry leaders, including Spring Textile Co., Wensli Textile Co., Delong Textile Co., Sen.Pal Garment Co., Jinshaxiang Garment Co. and Lihui Oil Co. are still expanding while Hebei Yiya Co., Hebei Tianxiang Co., Zhejiang Lihui Co. and other advanced companies have come to Weixian. Some projects such as top grade textile fabric, sweaters, oil extraction and biotechnology have gone into production or are in construction. The annual output of lint has reached over four million?dan (200 million kg)?and a new recycling industry chain of “spinning - garment processing - cottonseed oil extraction - cotton stalk power generation - collagen extraction out of remaining cottonseed” has been generated.
The cotton waste isbeing cycled by a recently introduced bioelectrogenesis project. The 500 billion yuan project using cotton stalks for electricity generation, which disposed of 0.3 million stalks, saved 170?thousand tons of coal and generated electricity of 4.3 TWh annually. By recycling all of the cotton stalks in Weixian, cotton farmers earned 45 million yuan, saved 80 million yuan in fuel costs by using the waste from trees and crops, and got 0.4 million tons of potash manure from the ash every year. The process including amassing and transportation provides for the employment of over 2000 people.
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