1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 224: Owning the Endless Water Gold

"Dad, these inconspicuous little things are treasures!" Liang Ziqiang scooped up one or two of them, stood up and said while looking at them carefully.

"Is this a treasure? You don't want to fry it and eat it, do you? Except for some people with strange tastes who use it to make brine shrimp sauce, no one is willing to eat it. It's okay to take some back to feed the chickens and ducks at home!"

Liang's father disagreed with Liang Ziqiang's statement.

Liang Ziqiang knew that his father must have misunderstood what he meant. Although Artemia is also called Artemia Shrimp, and the word "shrimp" is in its name, it is obviously not the kind of shrimp that people like to eat.

Theoretically, Artemia is very nutritious and it is certainly okay for humans to eat it, but normally it is not part of the human diet.

Some villagers use it to feed chickens and ducks, which is considered to be the right way to use it, but it is not the way to maximize the value of Artemia.

The truly invincible value of Artemia is that it is used to raise shrimp.

Its nutritional content is extremely high-quality, and it can be regarded as the most rare natural bait for shrimps. It is better than any natural food that shrimps usually eat, and also better than all artificially produced shrimp feeds.

Not only can it make shrimp grow rapidly, but more amazingly, Artemia can be regarded as a kind of "living medicine". Because it contains a lot of biologically active substances, it can prevent and treat infectious diseases such as white spot disease and red spot disease of shrimp.

In a word, shrimps raised on Artemia have fresh meat, large size and almost never suffer from shrimp diseases. Shrimp farmers can be as worry-free as they want, and they are truly "hands-off shopkeepers".

For this reason, later generations called Artemia "water gold".

Of course, "water gold" is not so easy to come by. This thing is the real "artemia", which often appears in a very special environment - salt ponds and salt lakes.

It prefers places that are ten times saltier than seawater, and it can live happily in waters with a salinity of up to 50%.

Probably starting from the late 1980s and 1990s, some breeding experts began to become increasingly aware of the unique role of Artemia in shrimp farming, so the country began to use Artemia to produce tons of high-quality feed and provide it to some shrimp farmers.

As for the source of Artemia, one is that there are a lot of Artemia resources in the salt lakes in the inland and plateaus. The second is that there are also a lot of Artemia resources in some abandoned salt ponds along the coast.

However, salt fields and salt lakes are limited after all, so even in later generations, Artemia worm feed is a rare and scarce resource.

Now, I suddenly encountered so many Artemia spp., and a thought that had flashed through my mind many times before came to my mind again -

Farming prawns!

In the past six months since his rebirth, in addition to being busy going out to sea and fishing to make money every day, Liang Ziqiang has considered more than once the next step of supporting his family and getting rich when he is quiet.

Buying bigger and bigger boats, going to farther and farther seas, and catching more and more fish, this is definitely the path he will continue to take in the long run.

But apart from this, is there anything else we can do by relying on the sea?

Living by the sea means more than just pointing to the sea!

As early as September last year, he had thought about aquaculture.

This thought has become even stronger recently after experiencing a few months of off-season fishing.

In addition to relying on the weather for food, if you can try to cultivate some seafood yourself, once successful, it will be an important supplement to your income.

However, based on realistic conditions, such as capital cost, time and energy, technology, breeding difficulty, market performance, village resource conditions and other aspects, it is not possible to simply choose any fish or shrimp and start breeding them.

Just talking about the market, in the year he is now in, the country began to liberalize and invigorate market transactions, abolishing the maximum price limit for purchase and sale negotiations in order to activate everyone's enthusiasm for production.

In 1985, which is next year, seafood prices will successfully break through the barrier, and purchase and sales will follow market trends, and prices will see a sharp increase across the board.

Silver pomfret weighing more than 500 grams now costs 60 cents per catty; next year, it will be around 1.5 yuan per catty. This is the bulk purchase price at the dock, not the retail price.

The current purchase price for swordfish that weigh more than two kilograms is 50 cents per kilogram, and the purchase price will be around one yuan next year.

The purchase price of southern hairtail is just over 20 cents now, and next year the purchase price will be around 60 cents.

The current purchase price for herring weighing more than one pound is 50 cents per pound, and it will be 1.30 cents per pound next year.

But all these increases in the purchase price of seafood were beaten by another seafood: prawns, also known as Oriental prawns.

Last year, prawns were sold for 1984 yuan per catty. In 1985, it was about yuan. In , the purchase price was directly yuan per catty! Of course, the rise in the value of prawns is also due to the rapid increase in my country's export earning capacity in those years.

In fact, the expensive prawns in the 2004s and s were mainly exported to earn foreign exchange for the world market. It was not until that the price of prawns fell sharply, returning to more than yuan per catty, that they began to "enter the homes of ordinary people" in large quantities and became a popular food in China.

But, no matter what, in 1985 and the following years, prawns stood out, with the most dazzling growth, leaving other products far behind.

It can be said that it has outperformed the entire era.

Of course, Liang Ziqiang could not have known the above detailed figures on the specific changes in the purchase price of seafood in 1985.

But he had a very vivid and strong impression. In 1985, the year he was released after two full years in prison, he walked along the docks and the streets of the town and suddenly found that the prices of seafood had reached a level that was unfamiliar to him.

What I remember most vividly is seeing villagers carrying prawns to sell at 12 yuan per pound. At that time, he even went over to ask about it, thinking that he had misheard a decimal point.

He didn't know why Ming Xia was so far ahead in those years. The only thing he was sure of was that this was a fact that would happen next year or even in the next few years.

So, in the half year since his rebirth, when he considered trying aquaculture, he thought about it and decided to focus on prawns, also known as Oriental shrimp.

This year is the best time to start farming. During this year, the price of prawns has remained low at around 1.5 yuan, so the cost of farming prawn feed is also relatively low.

But when his prawns are on the market next year, even if they cannot compete with the 12 yuan of wild prawns, the price will at least be several times higher, and the input and output are completely disproportionate. Where can you find such a good deal?

At least next year and the year after, you will make a lot of money!
In addition to the exclusive information on market prices that he had already predicted in advance, there was another factor in choosing prawns: technology.

In his previous life, when he watched the ocean channel, in addition to watching his favorite deep-sea fishing and marine knowledge, he would occasionally see some introductions to aquaculture.

In his impression at the time, shrimp farming was relatively simple. He accidentally watched a few programs at the time to learn the technical points, and he still remembers them now.

These include highly efficient technologies that have been widely verified in later generations, such as using Artemia to cultivate Oriental shrimp, which I happened to see in those programs.

Now that he had unexpectedly discovered a large number of Artemia, his idea of ​​breeding shrimps suddenly became clearer, and he prepared to take corresponding actions in advance.

"Dad, let me tell you something. I often go to Chengpan Island. At first, I couldn't figure out why the scallops and prawns there were so fat. Later, I found that there were a lot of these Artemia worms there. The scallops and prawns ate them very happily! They must have eaten these Artemia worms to grow so fat!"

Liang Ziqiang thought about it quickly and said to his father.

The "Scale Island" he was referring to at this time was of course the Nameless Island, which was a jargon between him and his father.

He couldn't reveal that he actually knew the secret of Artemia through his later life experience. The easiest way was to go to that nameless island.

Sure enough, my father had no doubts:
"You mean that island? So it's the brine shrimp that made them so fat? I never thought of that! The large number of brine shrimp that appeared in the salt pans has only happened in the past two years. I don't think it has much effect..."

"Dad, I want to contract this salt field. Instead of drying salt, I want to raise shrimps!"

Liang Ziqiang simply told his father his thoughts.

This salt pan is definitely not suitable for raising prawns, so he will use the salt pan to breed Artemia. At the same time, he will select another pond in the village and introduce seawater to raise shrimps.

In addition to buying some peanut bran, the large number of Artemia in this salt field is also used as one of the natural high-quality feeds for shrimps. A batch is caught every day and put into the shrimp pond to feed the shrimps.

"By the way, Dad, are there any completely abandoned salt fields on the mudflats nearby, the kind that the village has given up on and doesn't plan to contract out?" Liang Ziqiang thought for a moment and asked again.

"That's true! Going back further, they reclaimed too much land in the early years and built a large number of salt fields. Later, there were not enough people to dry the salt collectively, so they gave up a large area. Now it's completely unused!"

As Liang's father said this, he took him to the abandoned salt field.

When Liang Ziqiang arrived at a remote abandoned field, he looked around and saw groups of Artemia swimming around. He couldn't help but laugh!
Now it seems that he only symbolically contracted the acre of salt field in front in order to have a stable supply of Artemia.

There is a large piece of abandoned land under your feet, and the resources of Artemia are so abundant that you can't see the end of it!
Since it was an abandoned field, he could certainly take the Artemia here freely and for free.

What stretches before our eyes is not just wasteland, but a treasure field!
What's swimming in the wasteland? It's water gold...

Two chapters have been posted in the early morning. Happy reading, fellow readers!
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(End of this chapter)