Chapter 375 - 179: A Bountiful Year in the Fragrant Rice (Part 2)

Chapter 375: Chapter 179: A Bountiful Year in the Fragrant Rice (Part 2)

He walked over to a blackboard, one of the facilities left over from the abandoned elementary school. Zhang Dashan quickly sketched an outline of Shizhou Village with chalk, then meticulously marked out the drylands, paddy fields, fish ponds, rivers, village roads, and residential areas.

"All the rice paddies near the South Swamp will be converted into lotus root fish ponds. Combined with the existing ponds in the area, that’s a total of 400 mu. The excavated soil will be used to fill in the nearby rice paddies, converting them into three-season fields—a total of 1,000 mu. And 100 mu for vegetable plots."

"Uncle, aren’t we keeping any vegetable plots?" a middle-aged man from the Zhang Clan asked, confused.

"How can you be so dense?" Zhang Dashan explained. "How have we always used our basic farmland? We plant vegetables in the winter!"

"Oh, right..." The man scratched his eyebrow, looking a little embarrassed.

Zhang Dashan drew several rotation plans on the blackboard, including:

Spring Soybeans — Summer Soybeans + (Bell Peppers, Tomatoes, Eggplants, Chili Peppers) — Winter Soybeans + Winter Wheat.

Spring Soybeans — Summer Soybeans + Summer Corn — Winter Soybeans + (Bell Peppers, Tomatoes, Eggplants, Chili Peppers).

The 100 mu of vegetable plots would be used as nurseries and for the villagers’ personal use.

In other words, Shizhou Village would no longer be planting rice.

After all, soybeans, corn, and wheat were also grain crops. As long as they maintained a planting scale of 1,000 mu of grain annually, they wouldn’t cross any red lines.

Zhang Dashan then turned to the crowd and said, "To develop our economy, I have another proposal. We need to buy a set of spray irrigation pipes to make watering easier for everyone in the future. The cost for this, along with the money for digging the fish ponds, will all come from this year’s soybean sales. To make money, these investments are necessary. If everyone forgoes dividends for one year, the co-op can purchase this equipment, which will benefit all of us in the long run."

Although some were pained at the thought of losing their dividends, faced with the overwhelming tide of change, they could only go with the flow.

Driven by the desire for change born from poverty, the Shizhou Village Agricultural Cooperative took the first step in its agricultural structural reform.

Meanwhile, in Xin Cun Fishing Village, also in Meilong Town, the rice harvest was underway.

Due to the drought this year, the harvest was more than ten days later than in previous years.

After the rice was harvested, tractors immediately followed, plowing the fields. The overturned soil buried the rice stubble and shredded straw nearly 15 centimeters deep.

These rice paddies would then undergo natural composting, fermenting for about half a month. In early September, they would be planted with Immortal Soybeans, which could be harvested by the end of the year. Then, from January to April of the next year, the fields could be flooded to raise Egyptian Catfish.

These rice paddies had already been modified. They weren’t just neat and uniform; they were also surrounded by embankments, forming a series of large fish ponds.

Of course, to manage monthly output rationally, the planting cycles for these paddy-based fish ponds were staggered across different sections.

To avoid delaying the agricultural season, the Agronomy Office of Hailufeng Company’s Agricultural Planting Division dispatched a technical team to provide on-site guidance.

This was no simple guidance. It involved selecting suitable rice varieties based on the season. They had to consider that some rice varieties don’t grow well in winter, while others have excessively long growth cycles.

The Xin Cun Fishing Village feed mill, which began operations last year, consumed the local monthly supply of 14,000 tons of Egyptian Catfish.

These Egyptian Catfish were split into two streams.

One portion was directly used as raw material for fishmeal and fish oil, which was then further processed into animal feed or refined fish oil.

The other portion was transported back to the Egyptian Fish breeding base in Magong Town. There, they were conditioned to remove their muddy taste before being made into fish products or sold live as Egyptian Catfish.

The entire industrial chain wasn’t perfected yet, but it had already begun to change the economic structure of Meilong Town.

Within the last six months, 15 new fish product processing plants, both large and small, had opened in Meilong Town.

These processing plants didn’t use ordinary Egyptian Catfish from ponds as their raw material. Instead, they directly purchased Egyptian Catfish surimi from Hailufeng Company or the Guotai Food Factory, then used the surimi to process various fish products.

Examples included fish floss, fish cakes, cat and dog food, fish sausages, fish balls and fish eggs, and fish-skin dumplings.

Of course, considering the potential impact on the industry, and to prevent small workshops from tarnishing the reputation of Shanmei’s fish products, Hailufeng Company and the Guotai Food Factory had joined forces to establish the Shanmei Fish and Meat Products Association. This association was created specifically to manage and supervise the smaller enterprises that joined.

As for factories that didn’t join the association, Hailufeng Company and the Guotai Food Factory would simply refuse to supply them with surimi.

But joining the association didn’t mean they were in the clear. Hailufeng Company would conduct random inspections of their products. If a product failed, the company would be warned and ordered to rectify the issue.

Companies that failed to make corrections would be removed from the list of approved partners.

This was a necessary measure to prevent the bad from driving out the good.

Otherwise, those small factories could wreck the entire industry in no time. The Egyptian Catfish product market that Hailufeng Company had worked so hard to build would be dragged down towards collapse.

Moreover, the Food Safety Bureau of Hai Feng County was also very supportive of Hailufeng Company, because they were afraid, too.

After all, the scale of Egyptian Catfish farming in Meilong Town had already reached tens of thousands of mu. This didn’t even include the large numbers raised in paddy-based fish ponds and lotus root ponds, and the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people were at stake.

With Hailufeng Company demanding strict controls, the Food Safety Bureau naturally increased its own monitoring efforts to prevent small factories from dragging the entire industry down.