Farming Green Pearls: Xu Liuren's Journey of Returning Home to Start a Business

    Recently, the 300 mu of green pearls farmed by Xu Liuren, a returning farmer from Tiantang Village, Raobu Town, Poyang County, have been well received by the market. In 2004, Xu Liuren learned that pearl farming had been halted in many places due to environmental pollution. Being a thoughtful man, he immediately gave up his job as a migrant worker and went to Fujian to learn pearl farming techniques. Under the guidance of experts from the local agricultural and environmental protection departments in Poyang, he began farming "green pearls." Xu Liuren strictly followed the requirement of fewer than 500 pearl oysters per mu, and in 300 mu of ponds he polycultured more than 20,000 fingerlings of the four major Chinese carps, carrying out three-dimensional polyculture of fish and pearls. Grass was fed to the fish, the fish excreted "green manure" that fed the pearl oysters, and the pearl oysters purified the water quality, forming a virtuous circular farming system. Although the yield of "green" pearls is much lower than that of traditional chemical-fertilizer-based farming, the water quality is good, the pearls are of better quality, and the market price is higher.