Crayfish farming grows into 40-billion-yuan industry in Xuyi, E China's Jiangsu

Photo shows a crayfish banquet held during the 26th Xuyi Crayfish Festival in Xuyi county, east China's Jiangsu Province. (Photo/Liu Xixian)

Villagers consumed 120 tonnes of crayfish over three days at the 26th Xuyi Crayfish Festival in Xuyi county, east China's Jiangsu Province, last month.

The crayfish produced here are served on dining tables across the country and exported to markets worldwide.

Honghu village, located by Hongze Lake, once relied mainly on wheat and rice farming for a living. However, these crops failed to bring greater prosperity to local residents.

In 2017, the village began adopting a crayfish-rice intercropping system, releasing crayfish fry into the ponds in March and bringing them to market in early April. After the rice was harvested, the fields were used for crayfish farming during winter.

In 2019, Wang Huadong quit his job and returned to Honghu village. The following year, he was elected village Party chief. He invited aquaculture experts to the village to teach villagers scientific crayfish-farming methods and built water-purification facilities to enable the production of high-quality crayfish.

Wang Huadong and his father check the quality of crayfish at a crayfish trading and distribution center in Honghu village, Xuyi county, east China's Jiangsu Province. (People's Daily Online/Wang Chun)

At the same time, the country was advancing crayfish breeding science. In October 2024, China's first national-level new crayfish variety, "Xuyi No. 1," was approved by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. After 12 years and six generations of selective breeding, it yields over 18 percent more weight within 50 days than conventional stock.

The variety is now distributed across China, with the first batch of 600,000 fry shipped to south China's Hainan Province in winter 2025 for off-season farming.

To scale faster, Wang partnered with neighboring Xuzui village to establish a company and brand. The two villages jointly developed lakeside cultural tourism and operated crayfish-themed rural B&Bs.

A crayfish parent-child park offers a leisure and recreation space set amid natural lakeside scenery in Honghu village, Xuyi county, east China's Jiangsu Province. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee)

In 2022, a village-level crayfish trading and distribution center was completed and put into operation. It now handles 50 million yuan ($7.4 million) in annual transactions.

After harvesting, crayfish are transported to a processing facility, where a fully automated line handles washing, steaming, seasoning and packaging in one step to lock in freshness. They are then stored in a cold storage facility at minus 25 degrees Celsius, enabling off-season sales. The finished products are delivered via cold-chain logistics to major cities including Nanjing and Shanghai.

In just a few years, Honghu village has undergone a remarkable transformation. Ninety-two percent of its arable land now operates in a rice-crayfish co-cultivation system, with per-mu (1 mu is about 0.067 hectares) output value rising to 4,500 yuan.

The operating income of the village collective has grown to 3.5 times its previous level, and villagers' per capita annual income has exceeded 20,000 yuan.

Automated machines process crayfish at a crayfish super factory in Xuyi county, east China's Jiangsu Province. (Photo courtesy of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Xuyi County Committee)

From 2021 to 2025, Xuyi's crayfish output recorded an average annual growth rate of 5.74 percent. In 2025, the total output value of the entire industrial chain surpassed 40.8 billion yuan.