Zhejiang Yuhuan kelp sells well thanks to scientific farming
Right now is the kelp harvesting season along the coast. For days, the kelp production area at the farming base along the Xuanmen Bay in Yuhuan County, Zhejiang Province, has been extremely busy, with kelp farmers rushing to harvest the kelp as the tide rises and falls.
Recently, this writer traveled by car to the dock at Fenshui Mountain in Lupu, where dozens of kelp farmers were busy dragging kelp ashore from the sea and drying it by the coast. Wu Daoqiang, a large-scale kelp farmer, happily told this writer that the year before last he farmed several dozen mu of kelp, and thanks to careful management and meticulous care, checking the kelp's growth every other day, he got his first taste of success in kelp farming. Early this year he invested 800,000 yuan, introduced high-quality kelp seedlings from Fujian, and bought some related equipment to set up a large kelp farm. After several months of careful management and scientific farming, he harvested more than 20 tons of kelp in this year's first batch, and expects to harvest more than 600 tons of kelp this year.
It is understood that the more than 500 mu of kelp Wu Daoqiang farmed this year, thanks to his proper management and care, is dark green in color, delicious in taste, crisp and tender, clean and free of impurities, and rich in nutritional value, with a yield of over a thousand kg per mu. At present his product orders are full, with basically all of it bought up by merchants from Wenzhou and Taizhou. Wu Daoqiang told this writer that calculated at current market prices, after deducting costs, the more than 500 mu of kelp farmed this year can still yield a profit of more than 400,000 yuan, up 40% year on year.
Wu Daoqiang, a large-scale kelp farmer, also told this writer that next he plans to set up a kelp farming economic cooperative, joining together kelp farmers on the island to form a kelp farming consortium, to ensure product quality, keep a good grasp of market conditions, and make the kelp farming products bigger and stronger.
It is reported that they have now contacted several farming households and begun work on opening up a new kelp farm in the Jishan sea area. At the same time, they have also reached kelp purchase agreements with a number of merchants inside and outside the county as well as in South Korea and Japan, preparing to expand the farming scale and open up the market.