Farmed eels

A visit to a local eel farm prompted some questions from Ben Tyley (our Nuffield craw fisherman) about sustainability after finding out that all of their eel stock are caught as wild young in the local rivers. It is not understood how they breed and little, if any, of their life cycle. The company release some of their mature stock back into the wild to try to avoid depleting their numbers. Over eighty percent of there market goes to Japan.

As our time was drawing to a close, we moved down to Shenzhen. We met with Wallace Chang of CBH who showed us through a malt house where I learnt that a lot of Chinese beer may have up to thirty percent rice added to the malt process to suit their markets. Beer is a popular drink in China (as it is almost anywhere else) and despite my initial apprehension, we all enjoyed the various beers we tried during our time in China.

There was a lot going on in Shenzhen with shipping coming in and out of the harbour with all manner of product. A visit to Shenzhen Southseas Grains Industries Ltd at their port side mill was a case in point, with the capacity to mill 800 tonnes a day and a feed mill capacity of 400 tonnes per day. You can imagine the number of shipping containers with grain coming in from around the world to be processed. ASW type wheat made up the bulk of the mills grain consumption turning this into various forms of flour for breads. We were informed they were looking to expand their mill further which is good news for Aussie wheat as AWB are investors in this mill.

My time in China was very interesting and although my understanding of this culture is very small it's a lot bigger than when I started.