Tuyên Quang’s local delicacy, fish cultured in cages, are sold at hundreds thousand or millions dong per kilogram, helping farmers in Lâm Bình district earn stable income and have comfortable lives.
Tùng’s family in Nà Tông village of Thượng Lâm commune, Lâm Bình district used to catch fish from Năng and Gâm rivers. Realizing that living on fishing was hard and unstable, he was determined to invest into the cage culture of fish.
After taking part in a training course of cage farming in 2014, he acknowledged basic techniques of cage culture of fish and experimented with two cages. Due to lack of capital, he used treated timber to make fish cages. After some crops, he realized that cage culture of fish in hydropower reservoirs brought high profit, thus he made further investment.
He had borrowed money to invest into ten cages by 2017. He had enough money to hire a mechanic to weld steel cages. He reared different fishes in those cages.
Tùng said that he has 40 fish cages where local special fishes such as sardines, denti carp, and goonch fish are mainly reared. Before the Covid-19 pandemic when consumption was high and feed were affordable, he could earn VND 100 million after costs, even up to VND 500 million.
Likewise, farmer Nguyễn Văn Minh was one of pioneers in cage culture of fish in reservoirs. His family has over 100 cages and becomes the one with the most cages in Lâm Bình.
Minh said that ideal ecological conditions in the center of the reservoirs helped the fishes weigh up well without infecting diseases, resulting in high profit. His family has provided five local workers with jobs, hence, stable income. He sold more than 40 tons of fish in 2021.
When farming fish in the Na Hang ecological reservoir, farmers do not have to pay for hiring surface water. The Na Hang reservoir is clean with high oxygen levels.
Lâm Bình district has 3,569ha of surface water related to aquaculture. Small reservoirs are 69ha and the rest is Lâm Bình ecological reservoir. This creates favorable conditions for developing local special fishes which bring high economic value to farmers.
Lâm Bình has one cooperative and 56 households related to cage culture and more than 280 cages, which produce over 300 tons of fish of all types such as sardines, denti carp, and goonch fish each year.
The district has 19 agricultural products awarded OCOP stars, three of which are fish products. This marks the development of the local aquaculture sector.
Fishes farmed in Lâm Bình and Na Hang reservoirs have been sold in markets and supermarkets in Hà Nội and some northern provinces. Lâm Bình district will focus on OCOP certification, traceability, and geographical identification for fish farmed in local reservoirs, especially special fishes.
VFM
