Fishery in Shanxi achieves rapid growth

The investment in the fishery industry in North China's Shanxi province continued to grow rapidly, with a year-on-year increase of 58.6 percent, surpassing the national average aquaculture investment growth. 

In recent years, Shanxi has focused on stabilizing and ensuring the production of aquatic products, improving the fishing industry's quality and efficiency, and increasing fishermen's income. 

The province has issued a number of guiding policies, setting up special funds for fishery development subsidies in the provincial financial budget for 2023. The provincial financial support for fisheries has increased from over 10 million yuan ($1.41 million) to 30 million yuan, accelerating the transformation and development of the fishing industry. 

Shanxi has obtained 129 million yuan in central and provincial financial subsidies, promoting ponds' standardized transformation and aquaculture wastewater treatment on 1,000 hectares of land. It has built over 800 modern facilities for land-based tanks and greenhouse-integrated aquaculture, with 90,000 cubic meters of aquaculture water. It has created four demonstration bases for ecological fisheries covering an area of over 666 ha. 

Three national-level demonstration zones for healthy and ecological aquaculture and one national-level demonstration county for aquaculture have been established in the province. 

In addition, the promotion and application of technical models, such as integrated development of aquaculture with vegetables, rice, and crabs, and aquaculture in saline-alkali lands have expanded the space for the development of the fishing industry in Shanxi. 

Dong Jianjing, director of agricultural reclamation and fisheries administration at the Shanxi Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, said that Shanxi will build a batch of large-scale ecological fisheries demonstration bases to promote the coordinated development of fishery production and the environment. 

Meanwhile, it will rationalize using suitable salt-alkali land resources to develop high-quality aquatic products, increasing the capacity and efficiency of the fishing industry and treating alkali land.