Ye Fei Leads Farmers into the Market on the Road to Shared Prosperity
The team of Jinrun Fisheries Cooperative Union headed by Ye Fei
Ye Fei, 37 years old this year, is a native of Yinguang Village, Shuiyang Town. After graduating from junior high school, he has been dealing with water surfaces ever since, weathering the ups and downs of the aquaculture trade. By successively establishing a specialized fisheries cooperative and then a specialized fisheries cooperative union, he has led farmers to brave the market and made positive contributions to developing the "blue economy" and helping fellow villagers increase their incomes and achieve prosperity, becoming a widely known leader of the fisheries economy in this water town.
First Attempt at Crab Farming Ended in a "Waterloo"
In 1994, after graduating from junior high school, Ye Fei followed his father to the Jiangling District area of Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, where they contracted a large ditch water surface to farm crabs. Although father and son toiled all day and worked diligently, they did not reap the harvest they expected. At that time, they lacked seedling-rearing technology, and all the young crabs had to be purchased from Zhenjiang, Chongming Island and Rudong. Because of the "long and arduous journey" over great distances, these young crabs could not withstand the strain and suffered heavy losses, so the farming returns can well be imagined: in the first two or three years they lost seventy or eighty thousand yuan, which was definitely no small sum at the time.
Having suffered his first "Waterloo" on the road of entrepreneurship, Ye Fei was somewhat disheartened, but his father encouraged him to stay confident and not be easily defeated by setbacks. During that period, Ye Fei racked his brains over how to master solid seedling-rearing technology and how to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Once he made up his mind, he sought instruction everywhere, asking whenever he did not understand and not being ashamed to learn from those below him. Combined with repeated experiments and careful summarization, he finally acquired his own "specialty" in cultivating crab seedlings, and further strengthened his confidence and drive to "get back up from where he had fallen."
Cultivating Crab Seedlings Himself to Stage a "Comeback"
In 1998, after the profound lesson of his failed crab farming elsewhere, Ye Fei summoned his courage and dug 3 mu of crab ponds to begin juvenile crab cultivation, earning 3,000 yuan that year. Although the profit was meager and insignificant, it gave him a "shot in the arm." The next year, he dug another 2 mu of crab ponds and earned 18,000 yuan that year. The third year, he dug another 4 mu of crab ponds in one go and ended up earning 20,000 yuan. Because the crab seedlings he carefully cultivated were "locally born and raised," avoiding the "not adapting to the local environment" problems of the past, they had a very high survival rate after being purchased and farmed by other farmers in Jinbao Wei, and of course the returns were good too, creating a tight situation in which crab seedlings were in short supply.
Ye Fei, quick-witted and willing to endure hardship, on the one hand passed on all the crab seedling cultivation techniques he had mastered to the farmers around him without reservation, letting them dig fields to raise seedlings and get on the road to prosperity as quickly as possible; on the other hand, relying on his years of market channels and personal connections, he bought back in full the crab seedlings cultivated by farmers and then sold them to farmers across the country, freeing the farmers from worries about selling their crab seedlings. Under Ye Fei's leadership, more and more farmers cooperated with him, and the degree of market connection grew ever higher, basically forming a favorable situation in which farmers joined forces to brave the market.
Establishing a Fisheries Cooperative to Brave the Market Together
When conditions in all respects were ripe, in March 2013 Ye Fei took the lead in establishing the Tengfei Fisheries Specialized Cooperative, and neighbors and nearby aquaculture farmers joined one after another. In addition to unified purchasing of crab larvae and unified sales of crab seedlings, they also unified purchasing of crab feed and medicines, unified technical guidance, and unified sales of adult crabs. Through implementing the "Five Unifications" management, operation and sales model, they effectively strengthened their overall ability to resist market risks while also ensuring that the actual returns of the vast number of aquaculture farmers rose steadily. Taking juvenile crab cultivation alone as an example, the average net profit per mu reached 5,000-10,000 yuan, 4-8 times the returns of traditional crop planting.
Moreover, aquaculture does not require consuming too much time and energy, nor does it require too much labor intensity or physical exertion. Therefore, most farmers engaged in aquaculture in the Jinbao Wei area are in their sixties or seventies, "with red banknotes tucked in their pockets and the whole family living a good life," making it deeply favored and welcomed by the people of the polder villages. Within just 2-3 years, the number of farming households joining the Tengfei Fisheries Specialized Cooperative reached more than 500, with the average net income of farming households reaching 30,000-50,000 yuan. Driven by the Tengfei Fisheries Specialized Cooperative, the tiny aquaculture industry became a "money tree" and "treasure bowl" for local farmers to increase their incomes and achieve prosperity!
Joining Forces Among the Strong to Achieve Integrated Production, Sales and Transport
The market economy is an economy of good faith and also an economy of cooperation. "Going it alone" cannot create much momentum; only by joining forces in cooperation and combining strengths can one break new ground. Ye Fei, having been tempered and honed by the market many times, deeply grasped this truth. Of course, others who grasped this truth included Ge Qishou, Yang Bin, Wang Honghua, Chen Xianbai, Li Xiaoqiang, Ren Fuchun and other leaders of aquaculture specialized cooperatives. After many sincere and friendly consultations and adhering to the principle of spontaneity and voluntariness, they finally came together hand in hand and on April 12, 2014, formally established the "Jinrun Fisheries Specialized Cooperative Union," the first of its kind in the city's aquaculture history, marking another new signboard for Shuiyang Town, the "Hometown of Chinese Juvenile Crabs"!
The seven farmers' specialized cooperatives under the Jinrun Fisheries Cooperative Union -- Tengfei Fisheries Specialized Cooperative, Jinxin Fisheries Specialized Cooperative, Xiaoma Fisheries Specialized Cooperative, Honghua River Crab Seedling Specialized Cooperative, Yang Bin Crab Seedling Specialized Cooperative, Qiangzi Crab Seedling Specialized Cooperative and Taiping Fisheries Specialized Cooperative -- each have their own strengths. Although they had cooperative relations before, these were not close-knit, and when coordinating and unifying market prices and dispatching crab seedlings and adult crabs they were basically in a state of "each pulling its own tune and each blowing its own horn," which was not conducive to making Shuiyang Town's aquaculture industry bigger and stronger. Now, at the initiative of Ye Fei, Ge Qishou and others, the seven brothers have come together hand in hand, achieving resource integration, complementary advantages and a joining of strengths on a higher platform.
In juvenile crab cultivation, the cooperative union cooperates with Jiangsu's largest crab seedling (megalopa) breeding farm -- the Sheyang Du Longjie Crab Seedling Breeding Farm, forming a superior seed selection and breeding model of "parent selection and control, coastal breeding, cooperative seedling cultivation"; in adult crab farming, the cooperative union strengthens cooperation with Shanghai Ocean University and other universities, pioneering the "Xuancheng Model" of ecological farming technology centered on "large-size, low-density stocking, planting grass and moving snails, creating an excellent ecological environment, scientific feeding and comprehensive disease prevention"; in production, sales and transport, the cooperative union has relatively strong market pricing power and dominance as well as a flexible, efficient, convenient and fast logistics and transport network, and maximizes the benefits transferred to farmers so that the vast number of crab farmers benefit. Through cooperative sharing and mutual benefit for a win-win outcome, it has achieved a "snowballing" effect of linked development. Today, more than 2,000 farming households have joined the Jinrun Fisheries Cooperative Union, the crab seedlings sold each year account for one quarter of the whole town, and the annual output value of crab seedlings, fish fry and adult crabs sold externally through the cooperative union reaches more than 80 million yuan!
"If you want to see a thousand miles farther, climb one more story higher." Standing at the threshold of a new year's endeavor, Ye Fei, this honest farmer's son and modern "fisheries tycoon," has not been burdened by his achievements or troubled by trivial matters. He is leading his team to actively apply to be an implementing unit for the "Demonstration Entity Creation" of Anhui Province's agricultural socialized service "111" project, and is starting to carry out an "Internet Plus" action plan. It is believed that in the near future, he will surely be able to lead his Shuiyang "Jinrun Union" team to create new and greater achievements for developing modern fisheries in Xuancheng and benefiting the people of this water town!