Thạc Sĩ Aquaculture in Vietnam: from small-scale integration to intensive production

LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ

Table of Contents
Executive Summary
Acknowledgments
List of figures and tables
1. Introduction/Statement of Problem
1.2: Background: Aquaculture in Vietnam
2. Lit review/background, inc. Definition of terms
3. Case Study/results/Presentation of data
3.1: The transition from integrated systems to intensive monoculture
4. Conclusions: IRAI (integrated regional aquaculture industries (a model)
5.1 Unsustainability of Feeds
5.2 BMPs
5.3 Need for IRAI
Appendix 1: Implications of the transformations of Vietnamese aquaculture for the
future development of Rhode Island aquaculture
Appendix 2: Catfish industry in Vietnam
Appendix 3: Shrimp industry in Vietnam
Appendix 4: Lobster industry in Vietnam
Appendix 5: Site visits in Vietnam
Review of literature
Research Bibliography

Introduction
1.1 Thesis statement:
Village scale integrated agriculture-aquaculture systems (IAAS ), the primary mode of food production in Vietnam for centuries (Le 2001), has played a major role in traditional Vietnamese aquaculture. Although aquacultural production has expanded rapidly in Vietnam through the development of intensive monoculture, this mode of production is proving unsustainable (Edwards, 2011, DeSilva, et.al., 2006). Aspects of IAAS will have to be re-worked in a new context to respond to the imminent collapse of intensive monocultural industrial scale aquaculture production in Vietnam. A new form of IAAS must be developed to meet the new challenges facing aquaculture in Vietnam. In this thesis, I outline a new approach which I call Integrated Regional Industrial Aquaculture (IRAI), which brings the principles of IAAS to regional issues of industrial scale aquacultural production.
1.2 Hypothesis: IAAS plays a major role in the future of aquaculture in Vietnam.
1.3 Data: After exploring more than 40 sites, I found that only traditional, small scale farms practice something close to IIAS. Mid-level farms producing for local markets still manage to use elements of IIAS systems in many cases. Larger scale, industrial intensive monoculture sites have abandoned IIAS principles. As a result, many of these sites are now experiencing stress, and generating ecological problems for neighboring sites. This general view of recent developments was confirmed by several local expert theorists of IIAS, aquaculture specialists, and many fish farmers. The literature on the rise of intensive monoculture in Vietnam is divided between celebratory accounts and more critical accounts. The latter bring out many of these problems, and provide quantitative data to demonstrate the overreaching of ecological capacities.
1.4: Findings: My hypothesis holds, but not in the way I had expected. When I first planned my visit to Vietnam, I assumed I would find IIAS systems at all levels of production. Instead, through my site visits it became clear that there was a need for an entirely new level of the adaption of IIAS principles at the level of integrated regional aquacultural industry (IRAI).


Section 1.1: Global Context to the Rise of Aquaculture
As the world’s population swells to some 9 billion by mid-century, mankind will be hard-pressed to produce and provide the required amounts of calories and nutrients to sustain such a population. While per capita food production has increased, this increase has been achieved through an exploitative relationship to the earth, requiring great inputs of energy, fertilizer, and water; a relationship which has degraded more than one-third of the world’s arable land through serious erosion and nutrient leaching, as well as hyper-nutrifying waterways as small as creeks and as large as gulfs. While overall production of grain (which accounts for approximately two-thirds of the world’s energy) has risen, per capita production has leveled off since the mid 1980’s, requiring ever more new land to keep up production. Likewise in the seas, we have transformed what prior decades regarded as an endlessly renewable and fertile crop into bare stretches of ocean desert. The peak of wild fisheries occurred more than 30 years ago, when the annual harvest came in at 100,000,000 tons per year. This number has since dropped 20%, as trawlers and factory ships have had to venture further and further into the last un-exploited seas (such as the southern Antarctic seas). As shortages of land and water and living resources become ever more pronounced, the ramifications of our systems will become more dire, and seriously threaten the peaceful advancement of our global society.
It is clear that the continuation of current food production techniques is inadequate. The current paradigm of extractive, linear waste-producing agriculture is not sufficient to provide for the needs of the coming decades. Rather, we must develop a new relationship to food production, adopting a new paradigm based in ecological concepts of extreme resource efficiency and the closing of nutrient and waste cycles. By adopting ecological concepts of nutrient cycling and resource-use optimization, mankind will be able to use the limited resources at our disposal to generate a larger and more secure flow of calories and nutrients to the population of the world. The act of balancing a maximum benefit to all, while simultaneously minimizing negative impacts of food production to the environment is no easy task. Many experts look towards aquaculture as the solution to increasing hunger around the world (see the detailed Review of Literature, on pages 90-93 below). Indeed, aquaculture worldwide has experienced a massive boom during the past 50 years, growing from an industry producing less than a million tons in the early 1950’s to more than 60 million tons with a value of US$ 88.8 billion in 2006. As aquaculture systems have evolved over the decades, new technological and organizational strategies have allowed for ever more intensive culture of fish. The pace of development is startling. Aquaculture has experienced average annual growth rates of 8.7% per year, world-wide, since the 1970’s, and has been in fact the fastest growing food production system in the world, over the past two decades. While fish currently makes up 20% of global animal-based protein, the trends of growing global demand for fish shows no sign of slowing, and the FAO predicts the demand for fish to rise by 17% over the next 15 years. (In real numbers this would equate to a rise in production of 20 million tons.)