How Zhou Shiliang, the Greenhouse Shrimp Farming King, Was Made

    Right now is the peak season for Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) to hit the market, yet Zhou Shiliang of Chaoyang Sluice in Yinong Town sold out his entire crop of Pacific white shrimp a full month ago, with the cash already in his pocket. The second batch of Pacific white shrimp will be stocked with fry in late this month and is expected to be harvested by the end of October. This year, the net profit per mu from Zhou Shiliang's first season of Pacific white shrimp farming reached more than 5,000 yuan, 2-3 times the per-mu profit of ordinary farmers, making him a shrimp farming king in every sense of the name.

Zhang Zhenhua (1st from right), deputy director of the Hangzhou Municipal Agriculture Bureau, listens to Zhou Shiliang (2nd from right), general manager of Hangzhou Changda Aquaculture Co., Ltd., describe the facility-based farming of Pacific white shrimp. (File photo, source: Xiaoshan Net)

These days, Zhou Shiliang's mobile phone has become a hotline, with people calling to ask about shrimp farming experience, to verify the news, to offer congratulations…… This dark-skinned man of the land has truly tasted the sweetness of a “bumper harvest.”
　　
Starting with 3,000 yuan, he set up a professional farming company
　　
Zhou Shiliang, now well into his forties, is the boss of one of the largest white shrimp farming companies in our district——Changda Aquaculture Co., Ltd. The company currently has nearly 3,000 mu of aquaculture water area, of which Pacific white shrimp farming accounts for 90%.
　　
Perhaps no one would ever imagine that this large-scale company, with fixed assets of more than 30 million yuan and more than 300 employees, started out with just 3,000 yuan.
　　
More than 10 years ago, Zhou Shiliang, a native of Hezhuang, gave up his job at Hongken Farm, took the 3,000 yuan he had saved from several years of work, came to Yinong Town and contracted 500 mu of land to grow vegetables, watermelons and other cash crops. Zhou Shiliang recalls: “It was really hard back then. There was no machinery or equipment to speak of; it all depended on our own two hands, carrying on our shoulders and digging by hand. Especially in winter, when working in the fields, it felt like stepping barefoot into a frozen river……”
　　
A few years later, Zhou Shiliang keenly sensed that aquaculture had great potential. So he decided to first experiment with a 5-mu pond to farm Chinese mitten crabs. Sure enough, at the end of that year, the Chinese mitten crabs he farmed sold for as high as 360 yuan/kg, and the tiny 5-mu crab pond brought in a profit of 60,000 yuan.
　　
This first success ignited Zhou Shiliang's enthusiasm for investing in the aquaculture industry. Afterwards, he attended various training courses and consulted aquaculture experts about aquatic breeding and farming techniques. The following year, after carrying out extensive market research, Zhou Shiliang established a professional farming company and began farming Pacific white shrimp.
　　
Greenhouse farming breaks the convention of “depending on the weather to eat”
　　
The Pacific white shrimp is a heat-tolerant shrimp species, and farming it carries relatively high risks. Every year, the plum rain season and the typhoon season are hurdles. Once a typhoon or torrential rain hits, the sudden drop in water temperature in the shrimp pond can cause shrimp to die in large numbers.
　　
How could he change the situation of depending on the weather to eat? Zhou Shiliang, who had no previous shrimp farming experience, read through quite a few books, but still could not find a single clue. “In the end, it was the fact that a few years ago vegetable farmers in Sanwei Village achieved high returns by growing greenhouse vegetables that sparked my inspiration.” Zhou Shiliang said with a smile that at the time he wondered whether he could also learn from the greenhouse vegetable-growing approach to farm shrimp and take the greenhouse farming path. He acted as soon as the idea came to him, so Zhou Shiliang set up white greenhouses one after another over his shrimp ponds and began his “innovative farming method.”
　　
Greenhouse farming starts with seedling rearing. After doing the routine pond clearing and disinfection work, Zhou Shiliang built a mixed steel-and-bamboo greenhouse and laid aeration pipes and other auxiliary facilities on the pond bottom. At the end of March every year, Zhou Shiliang temporarily raises several million shrimp fry in the greenhouse; more than 40 days later, he releases the young shrimp into open-air ponds to let them adapt to the “outside world.”
　　
“Raising seedlings in greenhouses one month earlier can avoid two high-risk periods. First, the plum rain season. By then the shrimp have already grown larger and are less prone to disease; second, the impact of typhoons. July and August are peak typhoon months, and by raising seedlings one month earlier, they can be harvested in June and will not be affected by typhoons.” Zhou Shiliang said that avoiding these two high-risk periods is like taking out insurance for the shrimp, giving shrimp farming a guarantee.
　　
“Of course, choosing good varieties is also key.” Zhou Shiliang explained that ordinary farmers choose varieties rather casually, while the varieties he chooses are generally of a higher “grade.” Although they cost about half again as much as ordinary varieties, they have a high survival rate and strong risk resistance, and are absolutely “worth the money.”
　　
In order to accelerate the industrialization process of Pacific white shrimp, Zhou Shiliang also invested more than 6 million yuan to add a set of quick-freezing and deep-processing equipment for aquatic products, and created his own “Changda brand” series of aquatic products. Today, Zhou Shiliang's Pacific white shrimp products, from breeding to harvesting to deep processing, are all a one-stop “service,” and his products are exported to South Korea, Japan and other places, and he has gained a large number of repeat customers.