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Shrimp-rice farms bring hope to Delta

Published: 08/11/2009 05:00

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Eco-friendly and economically beneficial farming methods in the Mekong Delta is leading the way to more sustainable rural development.

The sun is blazing down but Vo Thi Nhieu and her husband are absorbed in consolidating the levees to prepare their newly harvested rice field for the upcoming shrimp crop.

The work is harder than usual after they decided to expand the shrimp-farming area by half a hectare this year.

“We have adopted the practice of shrimp-rice farming for the last three years. We used to cultivate only a one-hectare field. The profits we made from it encouraged us to expand this year,” says Nhieu, who lives in Nhi My Commune in Dong Thap ProvinceCao Lanh District.

“Last year my family earned VND60 million (US$3,300) from the one hectare, with VND45 million coming from shrimp.

“[It] has helped us lead a much easier life. Besides buying appliances necessary for a modern family, like a television, refrigerator, video, and even a computer, we can afford to send our four children to high school and university.

“Three years ago my family grew only rice, earning VND6 or 7 million per year. My husband and I had to do other jobs, including hawking during the rest of the year to support the family.”

Indeed, the switch to alternately farming shrimp and rice has helped change the lives of thousands of farming households living in areas with brackish water in the Cuu Long (Mekong) River Delta.

The Cuu Long Delta is Viet Nam’s “rice bowl”, growing nearly half its rice, but many areas here are not suitable for year-round rice production, because when rainfall is insufficient during the dry season water from the sea moves up inland through the rivers and channels. Nhieu’s Nhi My Commune is among the areas affected by this.

As a result, Nhieu’s family, like many others here, cultivated only one rice crop a year during the rainy season. For the rest of the year they were jobless, and they had to do odd jobs to survive.

There has also been an unexpected windfall from farming shrimp as Nhieu explains: “In the past, before we took up shrimp farming, we often had to use 30 sacks of fertilisers for our one hectare of paddy. But we now need only 12 because the field has become more fertile, thanks to the waste produced by the shrimp and other organic residue. We have cut farming costs by more than half.”

She lists more benefits: “The shrimp grow more healthily since their habitat is cleaner thanks to the rice and our spending on feed for the shrimp is significantly down because they feed on the organisms left behind after the rice is harvested.

“In my locality, 20 per cent of the farmers, or more than 100 families, have switched to shrimp-rice farming. The rest have yet to do so because they do not have the required financial or natural conditions.

Giang Van Luoc, a farmer in Tan Phong Commune in Bac Lieu Province, has also taken up shrimp-rice farming on his 4.4 hectares.

“I can harvest 1.3 tonnes of shrimps per hectare, and more than 700 kilos of shrimp eggs. The shrimps fetch me more than VND120 million a year. On the same land, I make about VND7 million from rice.”

Pervasiveness

The practice of alternately farming rice and shrimp began in the Cuu Long Delta in the 1960s. But it has only become popular and professional in recent years after State-owned agricultural extension agencies and local authorities stepped in to develop the system after realising its advantages.

Last year seven provinces in the delta, including Tra Vinh, Bac Lieu, Soc Trang, Ca Mau, Ben Tre, Kien Giang, and Long An, adopted the system on a combined 120,000ha, or 23 per cent of the delta’s total arable land.

Dr Do Minh Nhut, director of the Kien Giang Agricultural and Fishing Centre, said shrimp-rice farming is now the first option in his province, with farmers adopting the system on 70,000ha, the largest area in the region. It is expected to expand to around 100,000ha in the coming years, he said.

Ecological advantages

Shrimp-rice farming is an strategy in areas affected by salt water, according to Dr Mai Thanh Phung of the National Agriculture and Fishing Extension Centre.

“In addition to creating large profits for farmers, the alternate shrimp-rice farming is also of great significance to environmental protection, particularly when the rural environment is being polluted at an alarming rate,” he said.

Viet Nam is still predominantly an agricultural country, with farming contributing 24 per cent of its GDP and 30 per cent of its exports. But its development is being threatened by pollution which has become increasingly serious in recent years.

With the rural environment seriously polluted and groundwater and soil degraded, there is a real danger to the future of the economy.

Crops, which contributed US$9 billion to the country’s exports last year, are one of the major causes of pollution.

Most areas in the country favour intensive farming and multiple cropping to increase output. This has caused an increase in pests like brown plant-hoppers, stunt rice plants and rolled leaves disease in rice-growing areas in the delta and sugarcane areas in the central region.

Overuse of pesticides and fertilisers has also reduced the fertility of farming land. The agriculture ministry estimates that around 75,000 tonnes of agro-chemicals are used in violation of technical guidelines. This has caused serious soil and water pollution in many areas and an imbalance in the environment.

Livestock farming is also blamed for environmental pollution – it produces around 74 million tonnes of waste every year, of which only 40 per cent is treated before being released into the environment. Because of the pollution, epidemics like bird flu, blue ear pig disease, and foot and mouth disease are a constant threat to the country’s poultry and livestock.

Similarly, waste from aquaculture farms is also discharged directly into lakes, rivers, and seas without treatment even though the pollutants present in them are hundreds of times the permitted levels. Consequently, farming households are the first victims of this pollution, losing much of their shrimp and fish populations to diseases.

“The alternate shrimp-rice farming is a clean measure. The farmers often plant the rice crop between June and July and harvest it in October or November. They use short-term strains that grow well in saline soil and have high resistance to insects.

“To ensure the health of shrimps, the farmers do not use chemicals when cultivating the rice,” Phung said.

The shrimp crop lasts six or seven months starting in December. When the shrimp are still young they mainly eat organisms left behind after the rice harvest.

They are provided with other feed before harvest, but mainly organic substances like broken rice and bran. Their habitat is clean, thanks to the rice plants that absorb all the waste and remains of the feed used in the previous season.

Phung said both the rice and shrimp harvested from the fields are clean, as is the environment.

It helps maintain the balance of nature, thus ensuring their sustainable development, he said.

Intensive shrimp farming may be more productive compared with this system, but is also highly risky for farmers who could lose their whole crop to epidemics since the shrimp’s habitant is dirty, he added.

Climate solutions

The shrimp-rice farming method should be adopted widely in the delta to ensure the country’s cooking security, especially when faced with the threat of climate change, Nguyen Dang Nghia of the Southern Agriculture Science and Technology Institute said.

In the dry season 35 per cent of the land in the delta, or about 1.4 million hectares, is affected by salinity, he said. “This could increase in the coming years due to climate change.”

The Southern Institute of Hydrographic and Environmental Research forecasts most coastal areas near rivers, especially those lying at up to 0.6 metres above sea level, in the delta to be hit hard by the rising sea level.

Last year the World Bank said Viet Nam would be one of the five worst affected countries.

East Asia will suffer the heaviest consequences, with the Red and Mekong River Deltas taking most of the brunt.

The United Nations has warned that if the sea level rises by a metre, Viet Nam stands to lose $17 billion a year. In the Mekong Delta alone, 90 per cent of the land would be attacked by the salt water, affecting 20 million people.

Du of the Cultivation Department said shrimp-rice farming in the delta would partly alleviate food-related problems.

Planning

Hoang Quoc Tuan, director of the Agriculture Planning and Projection Sub-institute, said the area under shrimp-rice farming in the delta is predicted to rise to 143,100 hectares in 2015 and 147,300 hectares in 2020.

“To ensure the effectiveness of the system, coastal provinces in the delta should make their own plans for earmarking areas with appropriate soil and water conditions for shrimp-rice farming,” Tuan said.

Planning would also help keep out agro-chemicals and chemical fertilisers used for intensive rice farming in the area from shrimp-rice farms areas, he pointed out.

Phung of the agricultural extension centre agreed saying that in the last few years most of the shrimp-rice farmers who made losses had their fields situated too close to rice-only fields.

He also pointed out another benefit of planning – it would be easier for farmers to sell their products to firms because they prefer to buy large volumes.

He stressed the need for authorised agencies to develop a standard shrimp-rice farming process and set up agencies that would supply high-quality shrimp strains to facilitate this type of agriculture.

But he and other experts warned about the possibility of shrimp-rice fields becoming chronically and severely saline and, thus, sterile.

To avoid this, farmers, after harvesting a shrimp crop, need to use technical measures to desalinate their fields before farming rice, they said.

VietNamNet/VNS

Provide by Vietnam Travel

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