Crayfish farming helped Zhang Xinliu realize his dream of escaping poverty and becoming prosperous
Zhang Xinliu harvesting his crayfish.
In the countryside in May, vegetation forms shade and orioles sing and swallows dart. Look, across the vast fields, someone is carrying a shrimp bucket and bustling through a crayfish farming base, busy beyond measure. He is Zhang Xinliu, and one reddish crayfish after another has "crawled" out a path out of poverty for him.
Zhang Xinliu, 41 this year, is an ordinary villager in the Dazhanghu Villager Group of Taodaicui Village, Guquan Town, Xuanzhou District. At age 18, after graduating from junior high school, Zhang Xinliu traveled north and south with dreams of making a fortune. He worked in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Nanjing and other places, and was determined to learn a trade. In the end, he did not learn a trade and did not earn money either. By chance, he and a colleague went to Xuyi, Jiangsu, and unexpectedly happened to arrive during the local crayfish festival, so he and his colleague ate heartily: "thirteen-spice crayfish," "clear-water crayfish," "red-through crayfish"... This stirred endless reveries in him.
To savor delicious food and enjoy a delicacy on the tip of the tongue, is that not a wonderful thing? From that time on, Zhang Xinliu decided to take the path of crayfish farming. The freshwater crayfish is an economically valuable freshwater shrimp species. It has 6 major characteristics: large and plump; fast growth and high yield; rich nutrition and tender meat; strong adaptability, able to survive in harsh weather and environments; omnivorous feeding habits, able to eat animal feed as well as artificially compounded feed and humus; and high economic benefit. Zhang Xinliu strengthened his determination to return home and develop crayfish farming.
"China's crayfish look to Hubei, and Hubei's crayfish look to Qianjiang." Guided by this saying in the industry, in March 2015, Zhang Xinliu went to learn from a master on site. He worked with great dedication and learned humbly, filling one detailed notebook after another. Even now he still keeps such farming records.
After completing his training and returning, Zhang Xinliu contracted more than 20 mu of abandoned low-lying fields in the villager group, converted them into shrimp ponds, and based on the knowledge he had learned, boldly invested more than 200,000 yuan to begin his crayfish farming. Heaven does not fail the dedicated. The crayfish he carefully farmed were not only large in size and reddish in color, but also survived for a long time after being taken out of the water, and were highly praised by buyers. That year he made a profit of 80,000 yuan. This further increased his confidence, so while expanding the scale of farming, he also studied farming techniques. In practice, he also explored how to maintain water depth according to different seasons, crayfish habits, food types and so on. He also started with feed, devoted himself to studying pure grain feed, researched scientific ratios, and applied his own "unique secret formula" at the farming base, giving the crayfish characteristics such as being pollution-free and naturally green. At present, merchants from Nanjing, Wuxi and other places are coming one after another to purchase them.
May, everything is full of hope. Zhang Xinliu, who has embarked on the path out of poverty, is learning internet sales and starting to establish a "network + base + farmers" farming model, so as to drive more villagers to become prosperous by raising shrimp.