Sông Cầu, a town in the Phú Yên province, is located on central Vietnam’s seacoast. The commune of Xuân Hải is located on the peninsula, dedicated to marine fish culture. Almost all marine farms in Sông Cầu produce grouper and shrimp. About 50 household farms cultured grouper in Village #3, Xuân Hải Commune.
As is typical in small-scale farming, every farm has two ponds, one for nursery (from 2,000 to 3,000 square meters), and the other (3,000 to 3,500 square meters) for grow out. Fingerlings ranging in size from 3 to 5 centimeters came from Nha Trang, and the fish weigh between 1 to 1.2 kilograms at harvest. The entire crop took 21 months to grow with a survival rate of about 50 percent. Grouper prices vary from 200,000 – 250,000 Vietnam dong (VND) per kilogram, depending on demand.
The common use of trash fish has held back the development of Sông Cầu. The People Committee pushed efforts some time ago to switch from trash fish to complete feed, but feed companies have not set up their distribution network. One reason given, among others, was low production yield. There was a trial done by a local technician to use complete feed (with no control group), thus the outcomes didn’t appear convincing to farmers.
In order to promote U.S. Soy products’ use in Sông Cầu, the first is to show the benefits of using complete feed. USSEC - Vietnam has experience in doing feeding demonstration as they did in Thai Thuy – Thái Binh (2016) and Hải Châu – Nam Đinh (2008). When farmers are ready to proceed with complete feed, the new pond culture technology, such as the In Pond Raceway System (IPRS), will be introduced.