Aquaculture

By Jill Schwartz

In southern Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, shrimp farms dominate the landscape. Boating through the maze of rivers and canals that pass by shrimp farm after shrimp farm lasts for hours. Meeting the half million farmers who call this region their home would take years.

It’s a new phenomenon. Until recently, shrimp farming was not a major industry in the delta (or anywhere in Vietnam). The industries that were most prominent in the Mekong Delta were agriculture and forestry, neither which were big players in the global market.

That changed in 2000, when the Vietnamese government allowed rice farms to be converted to aquaculture farms. It was part of the government’s plan to create a market-based economy and boost the country’s exports. The move has led to a seven-fold increase in the amount of shrimp produced in Vietnam, which now stands at approximately 350,000 metric tons annually. And the Mekong Delta is now home to more than 500,000 small-scale tiger shrimp farmers – the world’s largest community of such farmers.

In many ways, the government’s decision made perfect sense. Brackish water can be accessed easily in the region. Shrimp farming usually has a higher profit margin than rice farming, which used to be the most popular crop in the area. A system of irrigation canals – formerly created for rice farming – is in place. And rice paddies are easily converted into ponds that can be used for intensive shrimp farming. The government supplemented this by investing in additional irrigation systems, as well as research and extension programs related to aquaculture.

What was limited in the government’s game plan, though, were strong tools for ensuring that the growth of the industry does not negatively impact the environment, economy or society. This is particularly important to address in southern Vietnam, where most of the shrimp farming is done by small-scale producers –people who each farm approximately one to two hectares of land. While their commitment to sustainability is strong, they have few resources to dedicate to making sustainability a reality. 

That is where World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and several other entities – including the Mekong River Commission and Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development – step in.  They are using a three-pronged approach to helping small-scale shrimp producers do more sustainable farming: 1.) create cooperatives; 2.) implement Better Management Practices (BMPs); and 3.) improve traceability.  WWF fills a similar niche in India and Thailand, which, like Vietnam, are major players in the global shrimp aquaculture market. They, too, are countries where most of the farming is done by small-scale producers.

Create Cooperatives

At the heart of the strategy being implemented by WWF and others is creating cooperatives (a.k.a. “clusters”), most which include 20-25 families that farm adjacent or close to each other. A total of 21 cooperatives exist in the Ca Mau and Soc Trang provinces of southern Vietnam, two of the most important shrimp farming regions in the country. Families within the cooperatives benefit from sharing new information and lessons learned about how to implement BMPs. They, too, look out for each other, as they know that bad farming practices in one shrimp pond can directly impact farms nearby (e.g., discharge water containing dangerous pathogens can infect neighboring farms).

“We try to meet monthly so we can keep each other informed about what is happening in the community,” said Nguyen Dang Khoa of the Luong Thuoc Shrimp Cooperative in Ca Mau. “I think it is helping us become better farmers.”

 Being in a cooperative will also be an advantage if the farmers want to adopt the global standards for responsible shrimp aquaculture being developed by the Shrimp Aquaculture Dialogue, a roundtable coordinated by WWF. Farmers in cooperatives will be eligible to become certified as a group, a move that will reduce the cost associated with becoming certified. Because this cluster approach is intriguing to them, many of the farmers in the cooperatives are providing input to help shape the standards.

“We are the ones who farm for a living, so we want our ideas about the standards to be heard,” Khoa said. “Otherwise, the final standards may not be good for us.” The standards are expected to be completed in mid-2010. 

Ultimately, farmers also hope the cooperative approach to aquaculture will provide them with better access to capital they can use to improve their farms and lower the risks associated with farming. Money is needed, for example, to buy higher quality seeds that test negative for dangerous pathogens and to invest in other types of farming (e.g., crabs and rice) so they are less vulnerable, from a financial standpoint, if one crop fails. To this end, the Tan Long Shrimp Cooperative in Ca Mau has created a fund to help farmers buy new seed if their farm is not performing well.

Implement BMPs

Training sessions and one-on-one consultations are done with members of the cooperatives to educate them about BMPs they can implement on their farms, such as removing organic waste from the pond bottoms before stocking, as well as using chemicals and treatment more responsibly. They also learn about the value of continually improving their farming practices over time, not relying on one suite of “best” management practices that never change to reflect new science and innovations.

They, too, learn that implementing BMPs is a means to ensuring they can meet the performance-based standards – which, in most cases, are a set of numerical targets to hit – under development by the shrimp Dialogue.

In the Tan Long cooperative, the farmers are so intrigued by the BMP approach that they would like t-shirts that promote the BMP project, signage for their meeting area so people know this is where the BMP trainings are held, and a mini library of BMP manuals.

“The farmers involved in this project are excited about sustainability,” said Flavio Corsin, a senior aquaculture advisor for WWF who coordinates the small-scale farmer project in Vietnam. “They want to make it happen but just never had the guidance on how to do it.”

“When WWF comes down here to meet with us, that really helps get us motivated,” confirmed Lam Thanh Dung of the Tan Long cooperative.

WWF also is building capacity among local Vietnamese government officials (including extension workers) on BMPs and issues related to certification so they can provide direct assistance to shrimp farmers.

WWF leads a similar project with small-scale shrimp farmers in the remote Indonesian province called Aceh, which was devastated by a tsunami in 2004. There, WWF is educating farmers about BMPs so the shrimp farming they do has less of an impact on the environment than it had before the tsunami. WWF also advises other NGOs working in Aceh, including the American Red Cross, on the value of BMPs and how to implement them.

Improve Traceability

Traceability is an essential piece of the sustainability puzzle. Without traceability, farmers cannot document what they have done and market to consumers the fact that they have produced their seafood sustainably. That’s why the work with small-scale shrimp farmers involves assistance in creating record-keeping systems that are needed to implement traceability systems. Discussions are underway with the more advanced cooperatives to develop the first cooperative-based traceability system for small-scale, non-organic farmers in the Mekong Delta.

From Farm to Table

To keep the momentum going in southern Vietnam, an answer is needed for the key question that comes up repeatedly when talking to the region’s farmers: Is anybody going to buy our shrimp?

That’s next on the agenda for a team that includes WWF-Vietnam, WWF-Denmark, Vietnam’s Research Institutes for Aquaculture, and others. They want to meet with seafood buyers to discuss the important role small-scale producers play in the world’s shrimp aquaculture market, the work these farmers are doing to minimize farming’s negative impact on the environment and society, and the intent of farmers to adopt the shrimp Dialogue standards when they are finalized. They, too, want to provide farmers with business development training so they can be more competitive on the international market.   

 “We need to create the link between farmers who are doing the right thing and buyers who want to meet consumer demand for sustainable products,” said Corsin. “Doing so will make Vietnam a model for sustainability.”