Following Nature’s Trajectory

Taoyuan City’s kitchen waste trucks begin arriving at Hung Chiao Environment Technology Engineering Inc. in the city’s Guanyin District before 8 a.m. There, an auto­mated feeder begins the composting process by upending bins containing kitchen waste onto a conveyor. The belt carries the pungent waste through a magnetic field that removes metal debris, and then on to human sorters who remove other non-food items. The facility next pulverizes the waste, removes excess water, and stirs in enzymes and carbonized rice husks before pouring the mixture into a reaction vessel. Just three hours later, the sour-smelling waste is transformed into rich organic fertilizer with the smell of damp earth—a fragrance called “petrichor” by soil scientists.

As organic waste composting guru Zhang Yongqi explains, “Traditional composting takes three months to produce fertilizer. Now, enzymes can break down kitchen waste in only three hours and process an average of ten tons of kitchen waste per hour. That means you can process 80 tons of waste into 47‡48 tons of organic fertilizer in an eight-hour workday.”

We owe these rapid-composting enzymes to soil expert Young Chiu-chung and his development of targeted enzymes for waste processing.

Enzymatic components can be tailored to different waste materials to produce organic fertilizers with a variety of properties.

Microbial fertilizers

Born into a farming family in Guoxing Township, Nantou County, Young returned from abroad in 1980 to teach at National Chung Hsing University, where he also began researching microbial fertilizers. He says that farmers in the 1980s made liberal use of chemical fertilizers and ­pesticides, and weren’t interested in hearing about the chemicals’ shortcomings. Faced with deaf ears, Young refocused his argument on protecting soil from degradation to persuade farmers to switch to microbial and organic fertilizers.

Good soils are built on a foundation of microbes. When Young set out to use microbes as a new way to create organic fertilizers, there wasn’t much academic interest in the approach because, aside from the nitrogen-fixing bacteria that live in symbiosis with legumes, the microbial fertilizers then available delivered only low levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.

Determined to forge ahead no matter what obstacles they encountered, Young and his team gradually advanced their research from trials with potted plants to field tests, and on to technology transfers and guidance to companies producing microbial fertilizers. The team ultimately invested 30 years in their microbial journey. Along the way, Young helped the govern­ment develop a regulatory framework for the microbial fertilizer industry, and wrote the book Soil and Fertilizer, a classic within the field of soil science that has been translated into English, Korean, and Malaysian, and is now in its tenth edition.

Taoyuan City uses the enzymatic composting process to turn some 60 tons of kitchen waste into organic fertilizer every day.

From microbes to enzymes

After concluding his microbial fertilizer “campaign” in 2010, Young turned his attention to a new field: enzymatic reactants.

Traditional composting uses microbes to process kitchen and animal waste, and other organic matter like tree leaves and limbs. But the microbes need air and proper temperatures to do their work, which requires organic matter to be turned and sprayed with water frequently. The process not only takes a great deal of space and time, but also creates bad smells.

Why did Young want to replace microbes with enzymes? Comparing fertilizer-producing microbes to soldiers engaged in traditional warfare, he explains that it takes money and time to feed and train soldiers. Like soldiers, microbes need time to do their jobs: at least a month to break down kitchen waste, and six months to process garden waste. He contrasts this with enzymes, which he describes as proteins that work like missiles: once “launched,” they hit organic waste head on.

Workers remove glass, plastic, and other inorganic materials from the kitchen waste conveyor.

Enzymatic missiles

But making these “missiles” isn’t easy. Enzymes are very unstable and, like milk, spoil when improperly stored. Temperature is a particular challenge. Food waste must be heated to kill pathogens, but the heat can also destroy enzymes and the bacteria that produce them. You have to find a heat-tolerant bacterium and a suitable vector.

“I have a database of more than 8000 microbial species. I first have to find potential sources of enzymes, and then study their capabilities to identify strong candidates,” says Young. “You hit bottlenecks, and fail often. The key is figuring out the reasons for the failures.”

He jokes, “The hard part is managing your own feelings.” While the work isn’t easy, the challenges can be overcome. Changing your perspective on problems sometimes leads to new discoveries.

Young sees his microbial database as his arsenal, and his work on it has yielded many discoveries. Many years ago, some students noted that he had had more than 30 new species of bacteria published in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, and suggested that he name his new bacterial discoveries after himself. Rather than doing so immediately, he set himself a challenge: he would do so when he discovered his 100th bacterium. But bacterium number 100 wasn’t merely a new species. Discovered in 2014, it turned out to represent an entirely new genus, which he named Youngi­monas. As of this writing, Young has identified more than 150 new bacteria.

Heated to kill off pathogens, this freshly processed organic fertilizer is steaming hot.

An agricultural TSMC

Young spent seven years resolving an array of problems that came up in the enzyme catalysis process. He used enzymes with different capabilities to target different “troublesome constituents” in the organic waste and change the material’s smell and structure, using targeted enzymatic reactants to break the trouble­makers down and convert them into stable components. For example, animal flesh is notoriously difficult to process because of the complexity of its many components, including fats. Young manages it with a “cocktail” of enzymatic reactants produced by a variety of bacteria.

Seeking to further develop and promote enzymatic processing, Young raised capital from Fubon Financial Holding Venture Capital, Taihsin Financial Holdings, and Harvest Heaven International Investments Limited via the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Trust-U program, and used it to establish Tetanti AgriBiotech in October 2017. The company now runs three shifts producing 60 tons of enzymatic reactants per day.

Uncomfortable with the idea of his father still working so hard in his 70s, Young’s son Li-sen gave up his academic career at National Formosa University in order to help with the business. Tetanti currently sells 42% of its product to mainland China, 27% to Taiwan, and 18% to Southeast Asia.

Young is now urging Taiwan’s agricultural authorities to turn the country into an “organic island” by 2050 as a means of ensuring that its agricultural staples are safe to eat and telling the world that Taiwanese food is organic and sustainable.                                                             

Dafeng Organic Farm’s Zhang Minghui uses organic fertilizer made by the enzymatic process to loosen his soil so that it breathes better.

It takes just three hours to convert kitchen and other organic waste into an organic fertilizer with the scent of damp earth.

These vigorous young greens are flourishing in soil to which enzymatic organic fertilizer has been added as a base fertilizer.