Farmers in Changde, a city in central China’s Hunan province, are assisting their peers from Hubei province to take care of their businesses. They are doing this because the owners are currently under quarantine due to the novel coronavirus epidemic.

A local farmer in Li county, Changde, central China’s Hunan province, tends Xie Qiangguo’s crayfish pond. (Photo/Chinanews.com)

Xie Qiangguo returned to his hometown in Shishou, a county-level city in Hubei, before the Chinese New Year holiday. He was worried about his crayfish stock, which could die off due to a lack of proper care and management. He shared his worries together with 26 farmers from Shishou.

Luckily, farmers of Li county in Changde, where Xie’s crayfish cultivation business is located, have been helping people like Xie raise their crayfish, knowing they could not return to work on time.

Xie’s crayfish business is located at a rice-crayfish cultivation cooperative in Li county, which has more than 4,200 mu, or 280 hectares of land for crayfish breeding. 28 farmers from Shishou city contractually use 233 hectares of the land thereat.

Jiang Zhengdong makes a video call to Xie Guoqiang, showing him his crayfish pond. (Photo/Chinanews.com)

Seeing this, Jiang Zhengdong, head of the cooperative, called on his fellow villagers to help the Hubei farmers cultivate their crayfish.

The work is tedious as they have to make sure the water volume is suitable, feed the crayfish on a regular basis, and disinfect the ponds.

When he was not occupied, Jiang would like to make a video call to Xie, letting him see the status quo of the crayfish so that the latter could feel reassured. The two also made further cultivation plans together.

Jiang expressed that they have bought feedstuff with their own money, saying if Xie couldn’t come back to sell the crayfish, he will look for sales channels for Xie.