"King of fish" in Thinh Son

(Baonghean) - Perhaps talking about him, we don't need to calculate what kind of "millionaire" or "billionaire" he is. But the important thing is that he has created a fairly ideal model of fish breeding farm 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 for nearly 30 years as a worker at Nghe An Freshwater Fish Joint Stock Company; in 2006, Mr. Tran Van Minh retired and returned to live in 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 career" once more in his life. On that barren land littered with broken bricks, with jagged holes, people saw the couple with gray hair working day and night to convert it into fields and ponds. The husband plowed, the wife planted next to the makeshift camp, gradually bustling with the sounds of chickens, ducks, and fish splashing.

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

He confided: “At first, I had many concerns 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 old company's fish breeding station 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 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 there were times when floods could not reach 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 changed their thinking and way of doing business thanks to the impact of projects, programs, and support policies of the State”. - Once you found a market, you must have a plan to produce fish fry and must have enough means of transportation for large quantities? I asked. He was very excited: “That’s right! I signed contracts with units at the beginning of the year to know the output quantity for the year, then had a plan to produce the fry, otherwise if the fry were not available, how could my pond raise them all? 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 go to trade, 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 basically been 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, set up nets to protect 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 can't help but admire the "fish king" of Thinh Son land with a rough and tired appearance, but sitting in front of the computer surfing the internet, accessing information about technology, market, trends... he understands almost everything, and understands very deeply. Suddenly I remember a writer once said: "On this earth, there are no roads, people have walked forever and created 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 member households 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 means the whole 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 is 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 his scale into a real farm. I was happy for him, in the future he would no longer have to worry about a lack of supplies to supply 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