Juungar Banner in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, has moved more than 20,000 jin—roughly 10 metric tons—of seed crabs raised in-house at the Yellow River Rice-Fish Eco-Tourism Park into dedicated overwintering ponds, according to a press release distributed by Media OutReach Newswire. The transfer, which took place in late October, builds a reserve that next year's rice-field polyculture will draw from, marking the third consecutive year the park has produced its own seed crabs and completed the full cycle from megalopa rearing to overwintering and stock retention.
The announcement matters because it shows how a region once defined by ecological failure is turning environmental repair into a repeatable agricultural business model. Juungar Banner sits in the heart of the Yellow River's "Ji-shaped bend," where the river runs 238 kilometers through the banner, accounting for 28 percent of its course in Inner Mongolia. As a major source area of coarse sediment for the Yellow River, the banner long suffered severe soil erosion, with eroded land at one point covering more than 70 percent of its total area.
Around Xiaotanzi Village in Dalu Town, geology left some 80 percent of the land chronically saline-alkali. Traditional corn fields there yielded less than 300 jin per mu, or roughly 2.25 metric tons per hectare, and local farmers described the landscape as a stretch of white where nine crops in ten failed. In 2018, Dalu Town introduced a combined approach of saline-alkali land improvement and integrated rice-fish farming. Ditches were dug to flush salts from the soil, organic fertilizer was worked into the soil, and salt-tolerant rice was planted on a trial basis. By 2022, the park began large-scale operations with an integrated polyculture of rice, crab and fish, yielding what local officials describe as "three harvests from a single field."
This May the park brought in 200 jin of megalopae from Panjin, Liaoning, and released them into the rice paddies to grow out. After a full growing cycle under close management, the park produced more than 20,000 jin of quality seed crabs. Of this year's stock, 10,000 jin is earmarked for the park's own rice fields and the rest will be sold, bringing returns from both in-house grow-out and external sales.
"Buying in megalopae to raise the seed crabs ourselves lowers the cost of stock, gives us a much better handle on quality, and has improved survival rates. It makes the rice-crab business steadier and easier to plan," said Qiao Sheng, who heads agricultural production at the park. Overwintering care is critical to the survival of seed crabs, and survival rates have held steady over the past two winters. Those that come through will go back into the paddies next May to be grown to adult size and reach the market in autumn.
The implications extend beyond one park. In 2025, Xiaotanzi's collective income surpassed 500,000 yuan, and per-capita income reached 30,000 yuan. The village's turnaround from bare saline-alkali waste to "three harvests from one field" is one facet of Juungar Banner's broader shift from ecological governance to industrial transformation, a transition from "black-grey" to "green" that is unfolding across the winter fields of the Yellow River's Ji-shaped bend.
