The co-chairs of this forum were Mr. Ngo Hung, Vice Chairman of People's Committee of Soc Trang Province, Mr. Tran Dinh Luan, the Deputy Director General of the Directorate of Fisheries and Mr. Huynh Ngoc Nha, the Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Soc Trang Province. Participants attended the Forum including the representatives of the Directorate of Fisheries and the Vietnam Fisheries Association, the representatives of the Department of Animal Health; institutes, universities and scientific and technological organizations; the Department of Science and Technology, Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, companies, cooperatives and shrimp farmers in 30 provinces from Quang Ninh to Hau Giang having shrimp farming and some local media stations.

Currently, blackish shrimp farming has many different farming models such as: super intensive farming, intensive farming, improved extensive farming and organic/ ecological shrimp farming (shrimp - rice, shrimp - forest). The general point of these farming models is that production costs are still high, in which, feed costs may account for 65-70% of total production costs, followed by shrimp seed costs and material costs. In addition, the costs incurred during shrimp farming such as the cost of solving environmental pollution, diseases also increase the total cost of brackish shrimp production. Because of high production costs, the competitiveness of the cost of brackish shrimp farming is still inconsiderable.

At the Forum, the participants pointed out that the reason why shrimp farmers have to spend a large sum of money to buy feed for shrimps and shrimp seed is because they have less opportunity to access the food sources and shrimp seed at the original price of manufacturers. Instead, they have to go through many intermediaries leading to the prices raised by 20-30% compared to the original price. In addition, most organizations and small shrimp farms are less interested in handling and improving the farming environment. They rarely monitor diseases and the environmental conditions of ponds. As the consequences, when occurring environmental pollution or diseases, they often have to spend a large amount of money to handle. Besides, they are also less interested in monitoring the amount of excess feed when feeding shrimp so on the one hand, it consumes more food (increasing feed costs); and on the other hand, makes the bottom of the shrimp pond dirty (increasing cleaning expenditure). Another issue related to the competitiveness of brackish shrimp products was also pointed out by the participants that there is a lack of origin tracing system for brackish shrimp products. Antibiotics still used in shrimp farming are also a concerning reason .

Besides, the participants also actively discussed about some models of production organizations to reduce the service costs such as: social enterprise model – the solutions for sustainable development of shrimp farming in mangrove forest; the TOM VIET trading floor model, linkage model of shrimp value chain, linkage model of shrimp farming cooperative group and shrimp farming cooperative model. At the same time, the technical solutions to reduce the cost of shrimp farming materials were also discussed enthusiastically. In particular, they were the rational use of food and nutrition to enhance the health of farmed shrimps, the utility software serving pond control, the rational use of shrimp culture, the solutions to reduce energy costs in shrimp farms and the solutions for sustainable shrimp farming with risks and costs reduced.

VIFEP (D-FISH )