In recent years, Maoming has promoted the integration of its tilapia farming, processing and export industries. Its tilapia exports continue to show an upward trajectory.

A tilapia farm in Maoming. [Photo/Maoming Daily]

Maoming is known as the tilapia capital of China, and has built an important cultivation base for high-quality tilapia. One out of every 12 tilapia in the world comes from Maoming.

In the past, people liked to eat deep sea fish, and freshwater fish was relatively alien to them. However, more and more people now choose to order tilapia in restaurants or buy them to cook at home. Tilapia has got good protein, is affordable, and is boneless and therefore good for kids and the elderly.

Maoming has one State-level tilapia breeding farm, two provincial tilapia breeding farms, and more than 20 large-scale tilapia breeding farms, all of which have an annual output of about 1.95 billion metric tons of high-quality tilapia.

Maoming has fostered a "five trees, one fish, and one table of dishes" model to develop its agricultural industry this year. The five trees refer to lychees, longans, agarwood, exocarpium citri grandis, and Sanhua plum trees. The one fish refers to tilapia, while the one table of dishes refers to the prefabricated food industry.

In 2022, Maoming's tilapia farming area measured more than 260,000 mu (17,333 hectares), and its production output reached more than 300,000 tons. This accounted for about one-third of the province's total tilapia farming output and one-eighth of China's total tilapia farming output.

In 2022, Maoming had 15 tilapia processing and export enterprises, with an annual processing and export capacity of nearly 480,000 tons. Maoming also had 13 registered tilapia export enterprises that exported frozen tilapia to more than 20 countries and regions such as the United States, Russia and Canada. In 2022, Maoming exported 88,000 tons of tilapia, with a value of about 2.06 billion yuan ($285 million).

At present, Maoming has more than 200 tilapia farms and 26 leading municipal agricultural enterprises. The city also boasts more than 16,000 tilapia farmers, and the tilapia cultivation industry here has created more than 100,000 jobs, which drives the per capita income of farmers to more than 30,000 yuan.