Vietnam: Oysters for a better living

Vu Thi Ngan and her husband Ngoc have a pond next to the river Len in Da Loc, Vietnam. They cultivated sea grass in the pond before floods filled it with salty sediment and made it unsuitable. They switched to shrimp to adapt to the new conditions, but it didn’t generate enough income. Ngan and Ngoc decided to look at other options and participated in a study tour organized by CARE. The tour took them to Nghe An, a neighbouring province, where they learned how to cultivate oysters from local oyster farmers.

“Cultivating oysters is very simple”, says Vu Thi Ngan. “We needed to invest labour in the beginning to make a construction of bamboo.  Then we bought some string and attached big shells that the oysters can attach to. My husband went to different restaurants to find the shells. In the beginning they gave them away for free, but more people asked and now they take money for the old shells.”

The oysters grow big enough for harvesting after eight months. Then Ngan and Ngoc just need to take the strings of the bamboo, break off the oysters and put the strings back on the bamboo.

“We have two bamboo constructions of 50m2, one in the river and one in the shrimp pond, because the oysters filter the water and are in turn nourished by the shrimp. If everything goes well we can harvest and sell about 5 million dong (300 USD) of oysters in one season,” says Mr. Ngoc. “Maybe we will build another 50m2 to expand our production.”

With assistance from CARE, they plan to form a co-operative with 33 other households in their community. This will allow them to get a better price for the oysters, and possibly market their product together at the district market.