Getting Rich by Farming Fish: Xu Jian, a Model Aquaculture Entrepreneur in Wangdian Town, Dangyang City

Xu Jian is from Wangdian Town, Dangyang City. Born in 1984, he carries a maturity and steadiness beyond his years compared with his peers. From a migrant worker with a dream and a monthly income of just a few hundred yuan, he grew into a leader in fishery science and technology who dares to innovate and pursue his dreams. Through his efforts, he now cultivates 100 mu of aquatic products, runs an aquatic service center covering 200 sq m, serves 500 farming households across 10,000 mu, and sells more than 2,000 tons of adult fish annually. His persistent entrepreneurial spirit has let him taste the bittersweet experiences his peers have gone through, and the arduous road he has traveled in starting his business makes him cherish it all the more.

I. Holding a Dream, Determined to Farm Fish

After graduating from Hubei Yichang Mechanical and Electrical Engineering College in 2003, he worked in a factory in Yichang and did sales, full of confidence that he could use the knowledge he had learned to change his fate. After more than a year, however, he found that his ideals were hard to realize. Thinking of his elderly parents managing over 100 mu of fish ponds at home, toiling away facing the black soil with their backs to the sky, plowing at sunrise and resting at sunset, he conceived the idea of using his family's resources to go into aquaculture. In the end, after discussing it with his parents, he quit his sales job in Yichang and went to the Fisheries College of Yangtze University in Jingzhou to study aquaculture.

II. Striving Hard, Farming Fish Through Hardship

While studying at Yangtze University, he not only worked at the university's aquaculture base but also worked as an unpaid farmhand at the then Wangdian Town Fisheries Association. Rain or shine, he stayed by the fish ponds, and he kept at it until he graduated in 2005. At that time, the fishery medicine shop in Wangdian Town saw Xu Jian's hardworking and dependable attitude and brought him straight from the pondside to the shop to handle feed sales and all fish disease prevention and treatment work in Wangdian Town. When he took the job, his family's own fish ponds were also being excavated and renovated. By day he was both a salesman for the shop and a feed porter; whenever a fisherman called, he had to rush to the farming site at once. He also had to handle the renovation and reconstruction of his own 100-plus mu of fish ponds single-handedly. By the end of 2006, his ponds had been renovated and his work at the shop was going well. Even now, looking back on those early days, he still sighs with emotion. In 2007, the 100-plus mu of ponds began farming conventional species.

III. Learning and Forging Ahead, Farming Scientifically

Farming conventional species is labor-intensive, and once the adult fish are raised they are hard to sell; even at best, the benefit is only around 500 yuan. To improve farming efficiency, he took the initiative to attend entrepreneurship training at Three Gorges Vocational College and participated in the new-type professional farmer training organized by the Dangyang Municipal Agriculture Bureau. By learning from experts and consulting peers, he worked hard to apply what he learned to improve farming models and update farming species. In 2012, he used his 30 mu of ponds as an experimental demonstration base for high-density farming and special-species farming trials of yellow catfish. By 2013, his yellow catfish could generate more than 8,000 yuan in benefit per mu, creating more than 200,000 yuan in benefit that year. The encouraging returns showed him the sweetness of fish farming. At present, he mainly promotes the yellow catfish monoculture model, while also using 30 mu of ponds for trial farming of new species such as tilapia and loach.

IV. Serving the Aquaculture Industry, Taking the Road to Common Prosperity

After achieving prosperity, he did not forget to motivate the many aquaculture farmers around him. He enthusiastically taught his farming techniques to others hand by hand, helping neighboring farmers get rich together. As a fishery science and technology demonstration household, he not only got 20 farming households in his village to raise yellow catfish but also guided them in pond renovation and helped them develop tilapia farming, bringing them economic benefits to varying degrees. So that these farmers would take fewer detours in pond renovation, he went deep into each household to provide guidance countless times, enabling one household after another to successfully carry out standardized pond renovation. His selfless dedication and willingness to help others won him deep praise and acclaim from local farmers. Not only that, he also actively joined cooperatives and became a technical promotion advisor for the Chunquan Aquaculture Professional Cooperative, selflessly helping fishermen solve fish diseases and farming problems in the process.

In running the aquatic service center and talking with fishermen, the sentence he heard most from farming households was, "The sales channels for adult fish just won't open up; no matter how well you raise the fish, if you can't sell them, it's all for nothing." These words stuck with Xu Jian. He kept thinking about how to solve the difficulty of selling fish, so he contacted Wang Dachun of the Chunquan Aquaculture Association, and together they thought up ways and ideas to open up sales channels for fishermen. Through their efforts, in 2014 they sold more than 2,000 tons of high-quality fresh aquatic products for the whole year, completing sales revenue of more than 20 million yuan, and the farming households whose products he sold increased their income by an average of 300 yuan per mu.

Xu Jian is not only an outstanding trainee representative of the local new-type professional farmer training project but also a studious and diligent young man of progress. He has not stopped at his current achievements; instead, he treats every day as a new starting point, with more goals and more confidence, and as always uses his hard work to build a better life.