High income from sturgeon farming puts Yichang Longtan Village farmer Wu Hongping on the road to prosperity

    Wu Hongping, a villager of Group 1, Longtan Village, Yaqueling Town, Yiling District, Yichang City, used the Longtan hot spring with a constant temperature of 17 degrees in front of his house to invest more than 90,000 yuan in June 2008 to build a 1,000 sq m fish pond for intensive farming of Siberian hybrid sturgeon. He began selling after six months. By the end of the first lunar month this year, he had sold more than 7,000 sturgeon. The unified market price was 30 yuan per kg, bringing in more than 120,000 yuan in income and more than 30,000 yuan in net profit.

    After Wu Hongping's "first battle" succeeded, in April 2009 he stocked 14,000 fry at 3.5 yuan per fry. He happily told this writer that 1.1 jin of feed can grow 1 jin of fish, and adult fish of about 1.5 jin are the best-selling on the market at 15.5 yuan per jin. At present he has already sold a large number of adult fish, and they can all be sold before New Year's Day 2010, with total income reaching 260,000 yuan. With some experience in sturgeon farming, earning back the capital is no problem, and net profit will reach 130,000 yuan.

              The picture shows Zhao Baoliang (second from left), Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of the People's Congress of Yaqueling Town, inspecting the sturgeon pond. 

                      Figure 1: Siberian hybrid sturgeon weighing more than 1 jin are about to be sold.