Snakeheads are sold to traders at 50,000 – 52,000 dong/kg in Trà Vinh, up 2,000 – 4,000 dong/kg. And as such, farmers earn 20,000 dong/kg after production costs.
Trà Cú district of Trà Vinh province spends nearly 450 ha on rearing snakeheads, with over 1,500 households taking part in. An average of 46 thousand tons of snakehead are produced per year, accounting for 80% of the total output of commercial snakehead in the province.
According to most of the snakehead farmers in Đại An commune (of Trà Cú district), snakeheads weigh up to 0.7 – 1.2 kg each after 5 five months of stocking. It costs about 30,000 dong on fish fry and feed for each kilogram of commercial snakehead. Farmers earn a net profit of 20,000 dong/kg of commercial snakehead after production costs, thus, about 50 million dong is achieved per 1,000m2 of water surface.
Huỳnh Văn Thảo, Head of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Trà Cú district said that the rise in snakehead price over the last two months was attributed to the fact that supply was lower than demand. Besides, after learning a lesson over the years that the snakehead price always dropped amidst the centralized harvest, local farmers have shifted to partial harvest so that prices would not drop due to oversupply.
The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Trà Cú district advised local farmers to arrange a farming system for safety assurance, leaving negative concerns to the environment, and invest into contingent grow-out ponds for crop rotation and further rearing of small size snakeheads.
VFM
