Growing Lotus with Ingenuity, Old Ding Reaps a Bumper Harvest

After a busy early morning, 65-year-old farmer Ding Fengmin finally loaded more than 400 kg of freshly picked lotus seed pods onto a truck bound for Yiwu. A professional lotus grower, he lets more Jiaxing residents taste the deliciousness of fresh lotus seed pods, and uses his hardworking hands to fatten his “money bag.”

Ding Fengmin and his wife are traditional lotus pickers from Fotang Town, Yiwu. After their daughter brought the elderly couple to Jiaxing, he found that very few people there grow lotus. “In Yiwu, many people grow lotus. When fresh lotus seed pods hit the market, local guesthouses and hotels treat them as a specialty fruit, placing them in every room for guests to taste for free.” Ding Fengmin told reporters that fresh lotus seed pods are sweet and delicious. Starting last year, he contracted land in Huayuan Village to begin growing lotus, and this year the planting area reached 32 mu.

The stretches of lotus fields spread a green base over the farmland. Some pink lotus flowers are in full bloom, while others have just shown their pointed tips, in countless forms. One green-headed lotus seed pod after another pokes out, playfully cute, presenting a real-life picture of a beautiful countryside. The creators of this beautiful scene, Ding Fengmin and his wife, began sowing before Qingming. After 3 months of careful tending, they achieved this pond of scenery.

Lotus seed pods are picked from July and continue until October. Every day at midnight 12 o'clock, Old Ding and his wife put on headlamps, step into the 40 cm deep muddy field, and burrow into the more than two-meter-high lotus field to begin picking fresh lotus seed pods. As the headlamps sway among the lotus plants, lotus flowers and lotus seed pods are picked and brought ashore one after another.

Ding Fengmin said: “The most important thing about eating lotus seed pods is freshness.” Every day they pick until about 3:30 a.m., then he and his wife begin sorting and packing, and around 8 o'clock they start delivering. “We pick out the older, slightly bitter ones and sun-dry them into dried lotus seeds; we pick out the tender ones and sell them as fruit.” Because fresh lotus seeds stay fresh for only about 10 hours, Old Ding's lotus seed pods are generally sold by advance order.

“Most of the lotus seed pods are still sold to old customers such as guesthouses and hotels in Yiwu, while a small portion is sold through WeChat and other platforms to local residents of Jiaxing.” Ding Fengmin told reporters that not many people in Jiaxing eat fresh lotus seed pods. Through online sales and trying them fresh, more people are gradually eating them now. This year, online sales of lotus seed pods are expected to reach 50,000 yuan.

“Growing lotus seed pods means relying on the weather.” Ding Fengmin said rain and temperature changes all directly affect lotus seed pod yield. If it rains during the picking period, it affects bees pollinating the lotus flowers, and the number of lotus seed pods decreases. For example, this summer the temperature was relatively high, so lotus seed pods grew faster. A lotus field that was originally picked once every 5 days needed a full round every 2 days. With rising yield matched by a stable customer base, the output value per mu is also more stable. Ding Fengmin estimates that this year the output value per mu will be around 4,000 yuan, and the total income from 32 mu will exceed 100,000 yuan.