Crab Farming Business Opportunity: Farming Well Is Not as Good as Selling Well

Entering September, crab farmers in many places begin to catch and sell crabs. For example, a major crab-farming county in central Jiangsu started catching on September 5, and the selling price that day was 57 yuan per jin for female crabs of the 2-liang size and male crabs of the 3-liang size.

"It's a real pity to start catching now." Xing Qingsong, head of the Qingsong Aquatic Products Cooperative Union in Gaochun County, said after hearing the news, "The temperature has risen in the past few days, which is exactly the time for the crabs' last molting and their most vigorous growth. You could say that every other day, the crabs grow a bit larger. If we start catching again after a week or a few weeks, the price will be completely different. For example, our cooperative's crabs are not sold by the jin, but by the piece, precisely because we only start catching and selling once the crabs are mature and large."

This large crab farmer and major distributor introduced that their aquatic products cooperative union has 3,218 member households, farming 13.68 mu of crabs. Apart from catching a very small number of sample crabs for customers to inspect, the crab farmers have not yet started catching crabs. Moreover, even when the official catching begins, the cooperative requires all members to bring their crabs to market evenly. When prices are low, do not panic; when prices rise, do not rush to sell either. Otherwise, if everyone rushes to market all at once, they will undercut each other on price, and the only ones who get hurt will be the crab farmers themselves.

In fact, the vast majority of crab farmers have now mastered techniques for extending crab farming. As long as the techniques are appropriate, crabs can be farmed all the way until around the Spring Festival before being caught. "The crabs farmed by our cooperative were sold from the end of last September all the way to the 18th day of the first lunar month this year. During this process, prices kept rising, and the crab prices around the Spring Festival were about 30% higher than in October last year. Years of market experience have taught them that farming crabs well is very important, but selling them well is sometimes even more important."


In Anfeng Town, Xinghua City, there is Jiangsu Honggao Hairy Crab Co., Ltd., with a total crab farming area of 40,000 mu. Chen Yougen, director of the company's office, told reporters that most of those locally eager to sell crabs are small free-range farmers. They do not know much about market conditions and are anxious to seize the "first opportunity." "In fact, sometimes grasping the market's 'later opportunity' is also very important." He said that crabs can be brought to market from the Mid-Autumn Festival all the way to the Spring Festival. Among this period, crab prices are best around November 15, but by that time most free-range farmers have already sold out their crabs. Because supply on the market decreases, crab prices remain relatively high until the final price peak during the Spring Festival. For a long time, September and October have been the peak season for crab sales, and sales in these two months generally account for 40%-50% of annual output. During this period, crabs are often rushed to market all at once, which is very unfavorable to crab farmers.

In fact, many crab farmers already understand the value of the market's "later opportunity." According to the Crab Brokers Association of Linhuai Town, Sihong County, in earlier years, as soon as September arrived, crab farmers sold their crabs one after another. For a time, supply surged and prices fell, and the crab farmers made little profit. "Later we noticed this and extended and delayed the sales period. Near the end of the year, those large crabs were taken out of the icy water and attracted batch after batch of crab dealers. Basically, we had the final say on prices. The association not only purchased and 'stockpiled' crabs locally, but also brought in goods from other places. Last autumn, some people went to Wuhan and hauled several truckloads of low-priced crabs to Hongze Lake for temporary holding, then sold them near the Spring Festival, when the price more than doubled." Our reporters Xia Dan, Zhu Xinfa

Authors: Xia Dan, Zhu Xinfa