Stage 4: Wider reading :

Unit 9: Aquiculture

Aquiculture

The supply of fish from the many rivers and lakes in China, especially Southern China, may be supplemented with pond grown fish.

Ever since Tang times a body of water has been thought of as a three-dimensional space and therefore more than one kind of crop could be developed.

Plants and fish were obvious possibilities, but fish could also be stocked at three levels with three different species, one to feed on the surface, the others on the middle layers and the bottom of a pond.

These ponds could be included among the bays for growing rice, or they could be sited among the mulberries that provided both food for silkworms and bark for paper making.

Yet again, the drainage from pig sties could be directed to low points on the farm and provide an additional food source by raising fish on the waste from the pig sty.

The management of fish ponds became a major industry in China.

We saw a series of carefully managed ponds, situated in a range of ecoclimes.

There were fish ponds, 9 m deep, into which the drainage from pig sties flowed.

Mulberries grew about the edge to provide food for silkworms and the fish were also fed with crushed snails, weeds and grain.

The ponds teemed with fish.