Words / Kaneko
A common sense question: Does Beijing have a sea?
There is no sea in Beijing?
The natives of Four Nine City were the first to express their disbelief! Beihai, Nanhai, Shichahai, Qianhai, Houhai, Zhonghai... With so many "seas", how can it be said that there is no sea?
These "seas" should be "lakes" to be precise, which dates back to the late Song and early Yuan dynasties, when Mongolian lakes and rivers were numerous. The Mongols called the lake Haizi, and after they settled on Beijing, they also called several lakes in Beijing "Haizi", and over time, Beijing had so many lakes named after "sea".
Geographically, Beijing is surrounded by mountains on three sides, Taihang Mountain to the west, Yanshan Mountain to the north and northeast, and the North China Plain to the south and southeast. After climbing over the mountains, you will find that there is really no sea in Beijing!
Another common sense question: can seafood be raised without sea?
The answer is: actually!
Seafood and seafood are generally raised in places where there is a sea. But now, farming fresh seafood does not have to be built by water, as long as there is seawater, it can be raised anywhere, and it can be raised very well!
In inland Beijing, sea shrimp are raised in seawater, bouncing alive, fresh and full, and a little sweet.
In inland areas, it makes a lot of sense to be able to grow seafood from seawater. If you want to eat fresh seafood inland, you usually have to transport it long distances from the coastal provinces. Not to mention the price, freshness is not guaranteed. For example, shrimp, some freshwater ponds farmed shrimp, the yield is not high, the most important thing is the lack of seafood taste.
If the aquaculture model of seafood farming in the inland is mature and can be extended to more inland areas, the happiness on the table of ordinary people will be greatly increased.
This man, Qiu Zhenjie, raised sea shrimp in Beijing, which is not close to the sea, and the benefits are high and profitable. The picture below shows a 16-square-meter pool that can raise 1,800 kilograms of sea shrimp a year, which can be sold for more than 50,000 yuan.
(Qiu Zhenjie's pond where sea shrimp are raised)
Who said you can't raise seafood where there is no sea? The idea is open, and there is a way to break the game ahead!
01
Shipping sea water to Beijing!
Qiu Zhenjie graduated from China Agricultural University with a master's degree in business administration. In 2020, he ran a medical beauty shop in Beijing, and Qiu Zhenjie was always looking for a new project because of the increasing competition in the medical beauty industry. One day, a friend talked to him about a matter that someone had transported seawater to Wuhan to cultivate vannamei shrimp, which suddenly aroused Qiu Zhenjie's interest.
P. vannamei is native to the waters off the Pacific coast of South America, and after it was introduced to China at the end of the 80s of the 20th century, it has been cultured along the coast and has become the main species of shrimp aquaculture and consumption in China.
The vannamei shrimp in the Beijing market are all shipped from coastal areas, and Qiu Zhenjie considered that backed by Beijing's huge market consumption capacity, if it can be raised in Beijing, it will have more transportation cost advantages than shrimp shipped from abroad.
In 2021, Qiu Zhenjie decisively gave up the medical beauty industry and rented a 10-acre greenhouse in Xiaotangshan, Beijing, to cultivate vannamei shrimp. Qiu Zhenjie set up a technical team and made a breeding pond out of plastic. Although the idea of raising shrimp in Beijing sounds new, the first thing to solve is the problem of seawater, but Beijing does not have seawater.
There is no seawater in Beijing, but this is difficult for Qiu Zhenjie, he wanted to learn from the breeding base in Wuhan and transport seawater from Zhoushan, Zhejiang to Beijing, but he did not expect that as soon as Qiu Zhenjie calculated the account, the freight alone startled him.
A truck of seawater is 30 tons, according to the freight of 10,000 yuan, it takes about 1 million yuan to fill Qiu Zhenjie's breeding pond, which is too high for Qiu Zhenjie, and he has to find another water source.
Qiu Zhenjie, a native of Shandong, knows that there is a special seawater along the coast of Shandong, which locals used to call salt brine, which is a high-salinity seawater with about four times the salt content of ordinary seawater.
It just so happened that Qiu Zhenjie had a cousin who ran a salt factory in Zhenhua District, Binzhou City, Shandong Province, and salt brine was used to make salt.
After testing, this salt brine is very suitable for cultivating vannamei shrimp, and Qiu Zhenjie chose to pull salt brine from Binzhou, Shandong. Compared with pulling water from Zhoushan, Zhejiang, Shandong Binzhou is closer to Beijing, and from Binzhou to Beijing, a car of water only needs 5,000 yuan in freight.
In addition to being clean, Shandong's salt brine has another feature, that is, it is much saltier than ordinary seawater.
Qiu Zhenjie transported the brine to Changping District, Beijing. The salinity of salt brine is about four times that of ordinary seawater, and Qiu Zhenjie has thought of a way, as long as the salinity of the brine transported back is diluted to the same as seawater, one car of salt brine can become four truckloads of seawater, which further reduces the cost of water use.
After the salt brine was blended, the cost dropped to 1250 yuan a car, which made Qiu Zhenjie very happy, and the problem of seawater was finally solved.
02
What is the "pit" of marine shrimp farming?
In 2021, Qiu Zhenjie introduced 1 million vannamei seedlings according to the technology and model learned from Wuhan. Under the care of Qiu Zhenjie, the batch of shrimp grew to a dozen grams in two months, and it could be marketed in half a month.
In order to raise shrimp, Qiu Zhenjie's early infrastructure and purchase of various breeding equipment totaled more than 10 million yuan, part of which was the money that mortgaged the house, and part of which was the family's savings for many years.
Qiu Zhenjie thought about raising this batch of shrimp and selling them as soon as possible to relieve the tense economic pressure. Just when the batch of shrimp was more than half a month away from going on the market, at this juncture, something big happened to the farm.
There are more dead shrimp every day, and 300 pounds are dumped every day.
The loss is only one aspect, and more importantly, it has hit Qiu Zhenjie's confidence to carry it. In order to raise shrimp in Beijing, Qiu Zhenjie has invested more than 10 million yuan, putting all his wealth and the hopes of his whole family in the shrimp farm.
For 10 consecutive days, more than 300 kilograms of shrimp about to be listed died every day, worth 10,000 yuan, and even the workers were distressed to look at it.
Qiu Zhenjie didn't want to give up, let alone give up. He must find out the cause of the death of shrimp, and after observation, Qiu Zhenjie discovered a detail, all dead shrimp shells are soft.
Qiu Zhenjie consulted some experts, and after laboratory tests, and ruled out the cause one by one, he finally found the cause of the dead shrimp. It turns out that shrimp need to constantly molt to grow during the growth process, and if the pH of the water is lower than 7, the shell of the shrimp that has just grown cannot be hardened.
Qiu Zhenjie adjusted the pH of the water in time, which avoided greater losses, and in the Spring Festival of 2021, Qiu Zhenjie finally succeeded in raising the first batch of shrimp, accumulating valuable experience for the next large-scale farming.
Because it is not easy to transport seawater, in Beijing to use seawater to raise shrimp, in order to save costs, the water raised by shrimp cannot be changed. So Qiu Zhenjie spent a lot of money at the beginning to buy a water treatment system, which can filter and disinfect the seawater raised by shrimp to ensure that the seawater can be recycled.
With this water treatment system, Qiu Zhenjie only needs to replenish seven or eight tons of evaporated water to the shrimp pond every day, saving a lot of the cost of running to Shandong to pull salt brine.
It is with the salt brine and water recycling treatment system that Qiu Zhenjie can reduce the cost of shrimp farming in greenhouses. Qiu Zhenjie can raise six batches of shrimp a year, using a high-density farming model.
A pool can raise an average of 280 to 300 pounds, and the highest can raise 320 pounds. Raised for about three months, each shrimp can be about 25 grams, a catty has 20-25, can already be marketed in Beijing.
Catching shrimp in the pond is also relatively simple to operate, and after draining less water, you can catch 300 pounds of shrimp in about 30 minutes.
03
Focus on "fresh" to the extreme
As soon as the news of Qiu Zhenjie's raising shrimp in Beijing spread, many dealers in Beijing did not believe it at first. Later, some dealers came to visit the site suspiciously.
Seeing the pond full of swords, you can find the source of shrimp in Beijing, so you don't have to work hard to pull shrimp abroad, and the dealers are also very happy.
Dealers come here around 1 a.m. to catch shrimp, and after two or three hours, the shrimp can appear in the wholesale market in Beijing, ensuring that the shrimp are fresh.
In addition to selling to wholesalers, Qiu Zhenjie himself opened a live shrimp specialty store, and in the process of selling shrimp, Qiu Zhenjie found a problem.
Generally, when you go to the market to buy shrimp, you throw the shrimp into a plastic bag. When you buy it, you are alive, and you may die when you get home. Then it is possible that you will not eat it immediately after you get home, so the shrimp will die when you actually cook it.
Qiu Zhenjie originally raised shrimp in Beijing, in order to let Beijingers eat more fresh sea shrimp, Qiu Zhenjie is determined to make the extreme fresh, he developed a box with a rechargeable oxygen pump, put live shrimp into this packaging box, at least one day.
As long as its oxygen is constant, and then the shrimp has a proper ratio to the water, it is no problem for the shrimp to maintain a day or two of life.
Qiu Zhenjie's shrimp farm is originally close to the Beijing market, with this kind of packaging box, it has more advantages, this kind of packaged shrimp is alive after buying home, until the pot before the shrimp can still jump alive, very popular with consumers.
Through wholesale and retail, Qiu Zhenjie's sales reached 8 million yuan in 2022, and in the next step, Qiu Zhenjie will promote this breeding model to more inland cities.
Raising seafood in inland cities, which most people thought was sci-fi, is becoming a reality. With so many people who dare to think and do, coupled with the blessing of science and technology, agriculture is becoming more and more omnipotent.