Jiangsu's "Crab Cadre" Explores New Ideas for Getting Rich by Farming Crabs

As the saying goes, when the autumn wind rises, crab legs get itchy. Now that the autumn wind has just begun to blow, it is the season for crabs to hit the market. Today's protagonist of Wealth Creation in Jiangsu is a college-graduate village official in Gucheng Town. He leads the villagers in farming Chinese mitten crabs and is affectionately known as the "Crab Cadre."

Early in the morning, beside a pond in Shuguang Village, Gucheng Town, a young man is carefully inspecting the growth of aquatic plants. He is the "Crab Cadre," Xu Xinzhu. To provide a good growing environment for the crabs, he has planted hornwort, hydrilla, and other aquatic plants in the pond. These plants have different growing seasons, ensuring that aquatic plants are present in the pond year-round.

Why plant aquatic plants when farming Chinese mitten crabs? Xu Xinzhu explains that this serves two purposes: first, to purify the water quality, and second, to protect the crabs when they molt. When crabs molt, birds will fly down to eat them; with aquatic plants, the crabs can hide among them to molt, climbing on top or hiding underneath.

For many years, local crab farmers around Gucheng Lake practiced pen farming in the lake, using fishing nets to enclose a square area in Gucheng Lake for crab farming. With this method, the shells shed by crabs and their excrement accumulate over time, polluting the water quality of Gucheng Lake. On the advice of experts, Xu Xinzhu decided to change the old method and adopt intensive pond farming.

Xu Xinzhu explains that the intensive ponds he dug have a layered structure, with both deep and shallow areas. This makes it easy to control the water temperature for the crabs at each stage, promoting their growth and molting. The water depth in the pond varies, so it can be controlled section by section. Then aquatic plants are planted and snails are added, creating a cyclical regulation system.

To improve farming efficiency, Xu Xinzhu also adopted an economical farming model: the crab pond is mainly for crab farming, while also co-culturing a range of aquatic products such as freshwater shrimp, mandarin fish, silver carp, grass carp, and crucian carp.

Xu Xinzhu explains that the crucian carp are mainly there to be eaten by the mandarin fish when they breed; the large silver carp and bream eat the bacteria in the water; and the snails are added to purify the water quality and to serve as food for the crabs. This is essentially a small ecosystem.

After several years of crab farming, Xu Xinzhu accumulated a certain amount of farming experience and financial resources. Seeing that the villagers around him were still using the old methods to farm crabs, he visited their homes to explain the new farming model, passing on all the knowledge he had learned. He motivated 20 households in the village to improve their crab farming methods, and Liu Qiqiang was one of them.

Liu Qiqiang, a crab farmer in Gucheng Town, explains: "At first we had no experience and couldn't even raise them successfully. Many crabs died every year. Later we heard that Xu Xinzhu was leading many people in crab farming and had relatively rich experience, so we followed him and learned to farm crabs. Under his guidance, the annual crab yield is now quite high, and we've started making money."

Before farming crabs, to Xu Xinzhu, crabs were just a fragrant delicacy on the dining table. It was only when he truly started farming them that he understood: crabs are delicious, but farming them is hard.

This year marks the ninth year in office for 32-year-old Xu Xinzhu as a village official. A graduate of Yancheng Institute of Technology with a degree in marketing, he has worked in sales and as an assistant manager, and now he has become a veritable crab farming expert. His connection with crabs dates back ten years, when Xu Xinzhu had just graduated and was working in Shanghai.

Xu Xinzhu explains that at the time he knew Gucheng Lake had crabs, but he never expected them to be so famous. He could even see crabs from his hometown in Shanghai.

In 2006, after one year of work, Xu Xinzhu was encouraged by classmates to apply together for the village official position. As a result, Xu Xinzhu, who took the exam with a try-it-out attitude while accompanying his classmate, passed and became a grassroots village official in his hometown. Because he frequently dealt with crab farmers in his daily work, and because Gaochun had held its crab festival for many consecutive years, Gucheng Lake crabs had already established a certain foundation in public recognition, social visibility, and brand reputation, which sparked his idea of starting a crab farming business.

Xu Xinzhu said: "At the time I only had 20,000 yuan on hand, which was nowhere near enough. I had negotiated with the landowner to contract the land at 550 yuan per mu per year, but I didn't have that much money, so I arranged to pay a bit in advance, and then wait until the next year when I sold the crabs and had money to pay the rest of the rent."

In November 2007, Xu Xinzhu took 100,000 yuan that he had scraped together from various sources and leased 18 mu of water surface from 7 farming households in the village, starting his entrepreneurial journey. That year, with no experience at all, the crabs Xu Xinzhu farmed suffered deaths and losses, and he lost more than 20,000 yuan.

Xu Xinzhu explains that the water quality regulation was inadequate, leading to deaths and losses. Later, there was no choice but to urgently restock the seedlings. When they are small, one dead crab equals ten. If you see one dead crab, there are ten dead ones in the water.

Seeing the crab seedlings die without knowing the cause, an anxious Xu Xinzhu invited experts to the pond to observe and analyze, and only then did he find the reason for the failure. The embankment of his crab pond was not dug high enough, the water level in summer was not deep enough, and the water temperature was too high, causing crab deaths and losses. In addition, he had co-cultured too many species at too high a density, restricting crab growth. Facing the losses, Xu Xinzhu gradually came to understand the importance of scientific crab farming.

Xu Xinzhu began going to the fisheries bureau to seek advice, searching for information online himself, and frequently consulting experienced farmers.

In 2009, Xu Xinzhu registered his own trademark and established a crab farming professional cooperative. Currently, the annual value of the industrial chain reaches more than 4 million yuan, with a per-mu output value of up to 10,000 yuan. Once farming was on track, Xu Xinzhu began to think about sales channels. With the rise of online marketing, he seized the opportunity of "internet plus agriculture" and began selling crabs online. But Xu Xinzhu felt that while online sales were somewhat helpful, scattered sales were never a long-term solution. So Xu Xinzhu also tried a direct sales model, personally bringing crabs to Wuxi and Suzhou to contact customers. Large customers prefer to buy crabs directly from farmers, which saves the middleman's markup and reduces the risk of deaths and losses. Now, half of his crabs are sold directly to large customers.

Under the leadership of the "Crab Cadre" Xu Xinzhu, almost every household in the local village farms Chinese mitten crabs and has become wealthy. However, this year he is somewhat troubled. Why is that?

At this time last year, Shuguang Village's crabs were already gradually preparing for a large-scale market release, but this year there seems to be no activity yet.

In the crab pond behind the reporter, Xu Xinzhu is rowing a boat, checking the condition of this year's final molt of the crabs. After finding several shells shed by the crabs, Xu Xinzhu seems somewhat anxious.

Xu Xinzhu explains that this year the crabs' molting has already been delayed. In previous years, it would basically be finished by this time, with all the crab shells fully shed. You could see the shed shells in the crab pond, and the hair on the crabs' claws would be white.

It turns out that in previous years, this was the season when Gucheng Town's Chinese mitten crabs were released to market in large numbers. But this summer, due to continuous heavy rain followed by consecutive days of high temperatures, some crabs were washed away and others were suffocated. Not only was the yield reduced, but even the timing of the normal final molt was delayed, and this delay affected the normal purchasing and sales of the crabs.

Liu Qiqiang, a crab farmer in Gucheng Town, explains that this year the market release has been delayed by about half a month. In previous years, buyers would already be coming around to collect crabs by now.

What slightly relieves Xu Xinzhu is that due to reduced production and delayed market release, the price of Chinese mitten crabs has been rising this year, which can somewhat compensate for the losses of his 30 mu of crab ponds.

Xu Xinzhu explains that when preparing to open the pond for sales, he plans to take thirty to forty jin, or forty to fifty jin, to the market to test the waters and see how the market is doing, whether there are many buyers, and whether there are many crabs. Based on the conditions in the water and whether the daily feed can all be consumed, judging from what he has observed, it should be about 150 jin or more per mu.

When it comes to future development, Xu Xinzhu tells the reporter that currently most local farmers are small-scale operators, with few large-scale farmers. On the one hand, he needs to consider expanding his own scale; on the other hand, he also hopes to attract more small-scale farmers to join the cooperative, pursuing large-scale farming, with unified branding, unified selection of seedlings, and unified expansion of sales channels.

Xu Xinzhu explains that future crab farming may need to go large-scale. This year he had originally planned to farm more than 20 mu nearby as well. He has always told his customers and friends that quality and specifications must be guaranteed.

The entrepreneurship mentor of New Finance believes that Xu Xinzhu's use of new farming methods, development of new direct sales channels, and leadership of villagers in farming Chinese mitten crabs to get rich is commendable. Crab farming is easily affected by the natural environment. If natural disasters occur, the way to reduce risk is to spread out the farming. In the future, he could consider building farming ponds in different locations. As for expanding scale, it must go through scientific investigation and demonstration.

Entrepreneurship mentor Li Haoqing explains that for all the risks crabs may face, such as weather conditions, water quality issues, and market conditions, each situation requires detailed research and preparation of response plans. That way, when such situations really occur, although you cannot avoid them, you can reduce the losses caused by them and also increase your returns.