(pangasius-vietnam.com) For the year to July, farmers in Dong Thap province have stocked pangasius on the area of 1,263 hectares with average productivity of 358 MT per hectare. In which enterprises owned over 64.5 percent of farming area.
Due to unstable fish price and ineffective production, many fish farmers do not dare to restock on the area of nearly 80 hectares and the situation is expected to continue.
To make sure the supply of raw fish for processing and exporting, enterprises and processing factories in the province holds initiative in building fish farming zone. Enterprises managed their farming area by employing farmers to outsource or investing in full chain of fish producing.
With large-scale farming area, enterprises can apply international standards in breeding fish such as GlobalGAP, VietGAP. Therefore, they can ensure up to 70 percent of raw material for processing. To make sure a stable supply of raw fish, many enterprises sign contracts with local farmers to establish a system of raw material suppliers in locality.
Accordingly, enterprises provide feed and assign technical staffs to monitor and guide farmers from the period of fish farming to harvesting.
In the whole province, there are 20 seafood processors with total designed capacity of 429,200 MT finished products per year but now they only operated at 41.4 percent of capacity.