"Fish King" in Thinh Son

(Baonghean) - Perhaps when talking about him, we don't need to consider what kind of "millionaire" or "billionaire" he is. But the important thing is that he has created a rather ideal fish breeding farm model in his hometown Thinh Son (Do Luong). That is Mr. Tran Van Minh - Head of a cooperative with only... 3 member households, with a total income of nearly 1 billion VND/year...

Mr. Tran Van Minh (standing, first from left) harvests fish.

Once a soldier of Truong Son who participated in the Ho Chi Minh campaign (1975), protecting the northern border (1979); then nearly 30 years as a worker at Nghe An Freshwater Fish Joint Stock Company; in 2006, Mr. Tran Van Minh retired and returned to his hometown, hamlet 15, Thinh Son commune with his wife and children. The pension of a worker couple to support 4 children's education was quite difficult. We must find a way to escape poverty! Mr. Minh told himself, and with the job of a "fish farm" worker in hand, he went looking for a place to raise fish. Finally, he decided to bid for the land of an old brick kiln that had been abandoned for a long time to "start a business" once more in his life. On that barren land littered with broken bricks, with jagged holes, people saw the couple with silver hair working day and night to convert it into fields and ponds. The husband plowed, the wife planted beside the makeshift camp, gradually bustling with the sounds of chickens, ducks, and fish splashing.

After 3 years, on the 0.6 hectare land, there was a small farm with a straight road, green ponds with fruit trees such as longan, mango, banana, orange... along with barns for raising cows, pigs, chickens and ducks and intensively cultivating several rice fields; the family economy was temporarily stable. But if you continue to intensively cultivate rice and raise small-scale livestock for self-sufficiency, you cannot get rich. Mr. Minh started to work on his main goal: Getting rich from fish!

He confided: “At first, I had many worries and complexes. I have always been a pure worker and farmer, now I have to practice being a boss, both producing and trading in a competitive market mechanism, which is not easy, and the means of transporting goods... But I became bold thanks to many advantages: large land, local leaders' attention, banks lending capital. Then the fish breeding station of the old company in the district is a source of abundant fish fry and farming techniques... In fish farming, the water source is the most important issue, there is an irrigation station, there is Bau Vua canal flowing through, which has existed for generations and has never dried up”. Mr. Minh then received another 0.4 hectares of land, increasing the land area to 1 hectare and stopped growing rice, dug more ponds to focus on fish farming, initially mainly raising fish for meat, fish fry accounted for a very small part.

With his method of raising fish for delicious meat and his enthusiastic and friendly way of discussing, he has created a reputation, and traders from markets inside and outside the district come to weigh and buy fish at the pond. It is calculated that each year his fish farm harvests 3-4 tons of meat, earning 300 million VND, many times more profit than growing rice. From raising fish for meat, he gradually switched to producing all kinds of fish fry: black carp, grass carp, bighead carp, bighead carp, white carp, common carp, hybrid catfish, monosex tilapia... Households raising fish in the third crop, raising fish in ponds, lakes, dams... around the area have come to his farm to buy fish fry. But the dream of expanding the market to 11 mountainous districts in the province is Mr. Minh's "main issue". And he has succeeded.

Mr. Minh pondered and slowly told me about the first time he brought fish fry up the mountain: “I spent years with an old motorbike carrying fish to remote villages in the districts of Ky Son, Tuong Duong, Quy Hop, Que Phong... Each trip like that only had 15 kg, one bag tied in front of the motorbike, one bag behind the motorbike with a few small oxygen tanks, going back and forth in 3 days. There were trips where the motorbike broke down, the fish lacked oxygen, lacked water, and all died. Then when it rained and flooded and couldn't get to the village... So all the capital was lost. But it was from those difficult days that I realized the demand for fish fry in the mountains was very large, when farmers had changed their thinking and way of doing business thanks to the impact of projects, programs, and support policies of the State”. - When you found a market, you must have a plan to produce fish fry and have enough means of transport for large quantities? I asked. He was excited: “That’s right! I signed contracts with units at the beginning of the year to know the output quantity of the year, then had a plan to produce the fry, otherwise if the fry were not available, how could I raise them all in my pond? Now, transporting tons of fish of many ages requires “impressive” vehicles and equipment! I bought a truck specializing in transporting goods and a 7-seat tourist car to do business, meet friends and sometimes take my family here and there to have the vision to be enthusiastic about business. The equipment serving the fishing industry has been basically completed from nets, pumps, vegetable cutters, drilled wells, generators... and 10 sets of equipment for transporting fish over long distances from barrels, tarpaulins, oxygen tanks, aerators, ice...”.

Transporting fish for consumption at Mr. Tran Van Minh's farm.

Mr. Minh also told me about the nights of pouring rain, the whole family had to brave the rain to drain the flood, put nets to keep the fish when the water overflowed the banks; the cold days of soaking in the pond to train the fish to endure before being transported to the remote mountainous areas, processing manure to make fish food, coloring the water, cleaning the pond, preventing diseases... All of these were worries, both happy and sad, that haunted every member of the family. Mr. Minh himself had sleepless nights, worried about the persistent rain, about the disease that caused fish to die and float white in the pond, and even scientists were still confused and had not found a specific cure.

I couldn't help but admire the "fish king" of Thinh Son land with his rough and tired appearance, sitting in front of the computer surfing the internet, accessing information about technology, markets, trends... he understood almost everything, and understood very deeply. Suddenly I remembered a writer once said: "There are no roads on this earth, people have walked forever and made roads". Mr. Tran Van Minh has found his own way to get rich from his hometown's land. He is now the Chairman of the District Aquaculture Cooperative, a member of the Standing Committee of the Provincial Farm Association. The interesting thing is that his cooperative has only 3 members who are children in the family, but the economic efficiency is impressive: the average income of each household is over 300 million VND/year; that unique cooperative has an income of nearly 1 billion VND/year. His four children have all graduated from university and college. Among them is the son who graduated from Nha Trang University of Fisheries, got an engineering degree and came back to work on a fish farm with his father, and the daughter-in-law works as an accountant for the cooperative.

While I was sitting there excitedly writing about him, the “fish king” called me to inform me that he had just received 2 more hectares to expand the scale into a real farm. I was happy for him, in the future he would no longer have to worry about a lack of supply to fish farmers near and far. It is known that his facility produces 30 tons of fish fry each year. But in 2013, according to the contract, it was up to 70 tons. But it was still okay, thanks to him helping to sell to neighboring farms, sometimes having to call for “aid” from fish fry companies as far away as Thanh Hoa, Ninh Binh, Hanoi...

Vo Van Vinh