ThailandFreshwater Prawn FarmingFreshwater prawns are grown throughout Thailand. In Chachoengsao Province (east of Bangkok) and Nakhonsithammarat Province (southern Thailand), farmers turned to prawn farming when local bans prohibited marine shrimp farming in inland areas.Farmers work together, hold local management meetings, share information with their neighbors, and in some areas work communally at harvest.
Prawn farming is a very lucrative business that yields higher net profits than most other occupations, so farmers rarely subsidize their income with other activities.Unlike marine shrimp farming, the majority of prawns are sold for local consumption.
Most farmers sell to traders at the farm gate, who sell the prawns at the Chatuchak Market in Bangkok or the Mahachai Market in Samut Sakhon. Prawns are also sold in district markets, restaurants and hotels.Over 90% of the interviewed farmers practice monoculture, but some polyculture prawns with fish or alternate them with rice or other crops. The most prevalent strategy, employed by almost 7,000 farms, is to stock postlarval prawns in nursery ponds at high densities. After 60 to 75 days, prawns are transferred to growout ponds, with the first harvest after five months.
Most farms are less than five hectares.Farmers stock around 20 juveniles per square meter. Seed is most often purchased from local hatcheries, but is also available from Kaset Somboon Farms and Charoen Pokphand, the largest agribusiness conglomerate in Thailand. In preparation for stocking, ponds are dried for seven to 30 days, then tilled and plowed, and then treated with agricultural lime or dolomite. Sometimes salt is used in nursery ponds to bring up the salinity up to 0.1 to 1.2 parts per thousand.Farmers sell female prawns for $1.25 to $3.75 a kilo, while males, which grow larger, sell for $2.00 to $6.25 a kilo.
Farmers earn $24,000 a year, or more, well above the average household income in Thailand, which is approximately $4,000 a year for a household of three or four people.
Source: The Global Aquaculture Advocate (http://www.gaalliance.org). Editor, Darryl Jory (dejry2525@aol.com). Production/Freshwater Prawn Farming in Thailand. Vicki Schwantes (vsschwan@umich.edu), James Diana, Ph.D. (School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1041 USA), Yang Yi, Ph.D. (School of Environment, Resources, and Development, Asian Institute of Technology, Klong Luang, Pathumthani, Thailand) Volume 10, Issue 1, Page 70, January/February 2007.
