Ca Mau targets 280,000 hectares of prawn farming by 2020

Local farmers in the Mekong Delta province of Ca Mau harvest prawn. (Photo: VNA)

Ca Mau (VNA) – The Mekong Delta province of Ca Mau targets to have 280,000 hectares of prawn farming with an output of 280,000 tonnes per year by 2020.

To fulfill the goal, Ca Mau has been developing prawn farming with use of advanced technology and encouraging farmers to increase farm sizes and cooperate with each other.

Local authority has invested in improving infrastructure for prawn production in a bid to make it compatible with the new technology and enhance climate change resilience. Farmers have also been provided with training on the new technology.

According to the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, prawn has been grown in a smallholder system in the province with different ways of pond preparation and breeding process between farmer households, making the prawn industry more vulnerable to pollution and epidemics.

The local areas of prawn have not increased since 2013 but the province has seen a transformation from traditional prawn farming to an industrial, intensive production.

The area for breeding prawn industrially has increased from few hundreds of hectares to approximately 10,000 hectares while the intensive prawn farming area reached 200,000 hectares.