Black Tiger Farming
Due to the change from industrial scale intensive farming to extensive farming, now in July, shrimp farmers start to take parent stock for the hatcheries and start seeding after hatching.
The farming period is generally from Aug to Dec and harvest season is now Dec to May, then delivering to frozen seafood processors.
Normally in June, they will generally farm less and treat the ponds, as at that time the habitat and soil are higher alkaline.
Vannamei Farming
For vannamei shrimp, in general, in Ben Tre, Soc Trang and those areas, seeding time starts after mid-March. However, in order to have a more stable environment (temperature differentiation in night vs moon time, rainfall, salinity, PH ….) most of farmers still prefer to wait till April/May for the 1st crop. 2nd crop Sep to Dec. Some of the farmers have good control and environments that can allow some to farm a 3rd crop Dec to Mar.
In 2020, some shrimp farms start seeding early (about the LNY time), and due to pandemic and weak price a lot farms were already harvested in Mar/April. They will re-seed again in May/June, so expect to harvest Aug ~ Oct.
Therefore June & July, shrimp landings will be short and 2nd crop will be further delayed. Frozen seafood processors, suppliers and exporters may be facing some delays.
Farming Techniques
A few years ago, in order to help control of EMS, some farmers started to use stainless roofs to cover the intermediate (nursery) ponds (ponds in between hatchery & normal grow out ponds). The cost of steel, construction and maintenance was high, but in an effort control EMS farmers made quite big investments in it.
However, after few crops were farmed, it proved that the technique complicates the habitat as the roof increases the temperature, shields needed sun light, and also affected the Oxygen level. Ultimately this technique failed and the steel roofs were dismantled.
Raw Material Pricing
For overall farming and growth efficiency, most Vietnam farmers are targeting to grow to 30pc (HOSO size, pc/Kg). Last year, the price at this size was about 165,000~170,000 VND/Kg, but now only 125,000VND/Kg.
For size 60pc/kg (that is about 31/40 HLSO & PTO size), last year’s price was about 140,000VND/kg, now only 115,000VND/Kg
As the market demand for size 31/40~71/90 (HLSO/PTO) and smaller is strong, although that is not an ideal size for farmers to harvest in terms of yields. However to achieve these sizes with competitive costing, Vietnam will start to do heavier stocking density levels & partial harvests again. This will help seafood processors, suppliers and exporters grow their market shares.
