Pushing aside a layer of straw, you can see every potato is round, smooth and glossy, and it’s really a pleasure to see their growth—this is a scene of 500 mou field in Zoumaling Farm of Dongxihu district.
Two years ago, Zoumaling Farm take the lead in trying to plant potato using non-ploughing and straw covering method in the whole city. Now, this skill is maturing day by day, and the yield per mou is 1,500 kilograms of potato which brings ￥4,000 extra income every year. This planting method can also improve soil condition as well as prevent environmental pollution caused by over burning of straw.
Attempting 5-10 agricultural new species and technologies every year, this farm has become the symbol of high quality and efficiency agriculture in the city.
Zoumaling Farm’s topography is low leveled, and use to mainly plant rice, but the production is low with low efficiency, and every mou brings only ￥100 profit.
In 1998, the farm set about developing anti-damage agriculture. 1,000 mou paddy field was altered to plant lotus root and over 3,000 catty lotus root were produced on every mou, which meant ￥800 extra income for every mou.
Encouraging by the success of attempt, the farm decreased the production of rice gradually, and altered to plant lotus root, keeping 8,000 mou of lotus root every year. On the basis of steadying the area of planting, the farm kept improving the lotus root species. In 2004, they introduced the “tube lotus root” from Water Vegetable Research Institute of Agricultural Science Academy in Wuhan.
The planting of lotus root has brought 800 families out of poverty and into wealthy. The farmer Xinghe Li contracted with over 30 mou field and when he planted rice he could just maintain his family with 3 members to feed. However, his family’s income had exceeded ￥20,000 by the third year of changing to plant the lotus root.
While in the late 90s of last century, when the common fish market had relatively saturated, and the price of fish fell low. The profit was less than ￥300 from one mou of pond. Zoumaling Farm conducted farmers to raise mud eel using cage culturing. A 16-square-meter web cage putting into a common fishpond can produce ￥1,900 a year, and the profit is ￥1,300.
Raising mud eel by cage culturing brings fresh air to the fish market. After this, it spread to over 500,000 square meters in the whole city, and Zoumaling Farm also became the demonstrative base of raising mud eel by cage culturing in the city.
Only by “the change from planting rice to lotus root” and “cage culture of mud eel”, the farmers here earn over ￥10,000 more a year every family.
As the spreading of cage culture of mud eel is fast, the demand for the fry increased greatly. The farm along with HZAU studied the half artificial breeding of fry of mud eel in paddy field in 2003. And two years later, the farm had tackled the key problems of the experiment and established 180-mou breeding base which could produce 2,000,000 high quality fry of mud eel per annum and the output value a year reached ￥1,800,000. This readily solves the problem of high cost and risk buying fry out of the city.
These years, the introduction of European mandarin fish and yellow tail silver xenocypris and other species by Zoumaling Farm had filled the gap of fishing industry in Wuhan. The project of “scale-breeding and fry breeding technical development of synbranchoid eel” taken on by the farm is listed into the national “Spark Program”.
Leading by “two high and one excellence” (excellent quality, high production, high efficiency) agriculture, Zoumaling Farm has formed lotus root, intensive cultivation of fish and other leading and dominant industries, realizing large scale management, which makes the income of farmers doubled in 5 years.
Original news from Changjiang Daily of May 28th, 2007
