City residents eat increasingly diversified dishes at their homes and in restaurants, but seldom worry about how it gets there or its the associated by-products - mountains of animal waste.

Data provided by Shanghai Husbandry Office, under the Ministry of Agriculture, shows that animals in Shanghai's farming suburbs produce more than 10,000 tons of sewage each day, excluding sewage from farmers and their families. "Its disposal is an international headache, but how to improve its image and protect the environment is an urgent problem that needs to be solved now," said Pu Shiliang, a researcher at the office.

The city has established two plants to make manure out of animal sewage, but the yearly treatment capacity is less than one-tenth of the total amount being produced.

Pu said they had called for international tenders in 1999 to find a solution, but were not successful.

They are now planning to set up a special company to treat the waste, but no further details about the project are available.

Shanghai's farming boom began in the mid-1980s with the establishment of 1,600 properties when the government launched a project to fill residents' "food baskets."

After their basket was full, attention turned to the environment and the waste problem.

Farmland could not hold all of the sewage and frequent rains washed it into the waterways.

Since 1999, about 232 million yuan (US$28.1 million) has been invested in sewage treatment.

The number of farms has decreased to 1,043 and will be further reduced to 700 by 2005.

By that time, the annual slaughter quotas for pigs, cows and fowl will be drastically slashed to 2.5 million head, 60,000 and 160 million head respectively.

Farms within the outer-ring road, 2 kilometers along the Suzhou Creek, the main preservation area of the Huangpu River, will all be closed.

"It is a hard time for farmers to endure and the government shall raise particular funds to assist them in accordance with their scales," Pu said.

He said due to limited techniques and management, Shanghai's farming sector had become quite fragile.

Most of the chicken farms suffer losses, pig farmers break even and cattle farmers only get meager gains.

(China Daily August 15, 2002)