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The bitter tra
Since February 2008, tra prices have been decreasing dramatically, making a lot of farmers penniless. Overproduction caused by excessive farming due to lack of tra farming industry development programming has been cited as the main reason behind the painful story.
Turning rice fields into fish ponds
In 1989-1995, when Vietnam’s tra and basa exports went for good prices, farmers in An Giang province rushed to farm fish, and the number of fish ponds has been increasing sharply since then.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), in 2006, the Cuu Long River Delta had 36 tra fish processing workshops with the processing capacity of 274,000 tonnes of material a year. The figure has risen to 84 now with the total designed capacity of 1mil tonnes of product a year.
In An Giang province, farmers dug ponds to farm fish even in fertile land. Tens of thousands of hectares of land which was bringing in the income of tens of millions of VND per hectare turned into fish ponds.
Phan Van Danh, Chairman of the An Giang Aquaculture and Seafood Processing Association, related that several years ago, people rushed to breed fish, while those who had idle money rushed to buy land for fish farms. “At that time, if someone had money, he thought of buying land and breeding fish,” Danh said.
When riverside land plots were fully occupied, people bought land alongside canals. Agriculture land prices skyrocketed by tens of millions of VND per 1,000 sq m. Fish ponds ate into rice fields. Districts located in the Long Xuyen quadrangle like Chau Thanh, Tri Ton and Tinh Bien, which never before knew of tra fish, now also saw fish ponds in areas that were previously rice fields.
The fish farming movement has spread to neighbouring provinces of Can Tho and Dong Thap. Alongside Highway No 91, a lot of fish ponds have arisen.
Mai Thi Anh, a resident in Thoi Binh B hamlet in Thoi Thuan commune, in Thot Not district, said land buyers were mostly big businessmen, who developed large fish ponds. They could get thousands tonnes of fish every crop and sell fish for money, which they used to buy more land for fish farms.
Tan Loc isle in Thot Not district, which was called the fresh island with a lot of orchards, has also turned into a tra farming area. Orchards have been chopped down, while sugar cane fields have disappeared because local residents prefer tra fish.
Who has money breeds fish
In An Giang province, in the late 1990s, there was some 200 ha of fish farms, while the figure rose rapidly to 1,000 ha in early 2007 and 1,600 ha now.
In Can Tho, at first, only tens of households were involved in tra farming on the area of 20-30 ha, while there are now 1,200 ha of fish ponds. Thot Not district alone has 650 ha with nearly 900 fish farming households.
Ngo Minh Tan of the Dong Thap Seafood Association complained that Lai Vung district, which was famous for Lai Vung mandarin oranges, has now turned into a fish farming area. Chau Thanh district only had 50 ha of fish ponds in 2003, while it now has 186 ha.
According to the MARD, in 2000, the Cuu Long River Delta had 1,650 ha of fish farms, while the figure rose to 5,000 ha in 2005 and 5,900 ha in 2008. According to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), the fish ponds could provide 1mil tonnes in 2007, far exceeding the forecast level for 2010.
Nguyen Huu Khanh, former Chairman of the Fisheries Association, said that wide-scale farming caused by the lack of an overall fish farming development strategy was the main reason for the overproduction and dramatic decreases of tra prices.
Nguyen Van Dan, Head of Thot Not-Vinh Thanh districts’ aquaculture division, said that Thot Not alone has 46,000 tonnes of oversize fish unsold. He said 69 households in the districts have decided to stop farming fish.
VNN
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