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https://reasonstobecheerful.world/adopting-the-aquaculture-of-the-future-in-thailand/>
"Somporn Kaikaew is the owner of Prapapan Farm in Nakhon Pathom, a city 40
miles west of Bangkok. He farms tilapia fish and white shrimp across 160,000
square meters of land.
We hitch a ride on the back of Somporn’s pickup truck, driving along the dusty
roads that separate the fish farm’s large ponds of water. His farm is tightly
operated, with the ponds segregated neatly, along with bird traps and
scarecrows to deter predators and sophisticated recirculation systems to keep
the water clean.
There are thousands of monoculture fish farms in Thailand, but Somporn, 60, has
been practicing polyculture fish farming for the best part of three decades.
When asked whether it was a more complicated operation farming multiple
species, he said it’s all he’s ever known.
“I’ve had this farm for 30 years and I’ve always mixed from the beginning. I
copied from another farmer, it looked like it worked so that’s why I did it,”
he said.
In Thailand, farming fish and shrimp together is one of the most common
practices in polyculture farming. It’s also the first step toward bigger
changes in sustainability that Thailand’s aquaculture and fishing industry
could see in the coming years.
That’s the hope of aquaculture experts as they prepare to convince more of
Thailand’s fishing farmers to shift to a more sustainable model in which marine
species are grown within the same system. That system, which is already being
successfully practiced on a few fish farms in Thailand as well as in many other
places worldwide, is called Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA). In
IMTA, multiple organisms from different trophic levels — rungs on the food
chain, essentially — are farmed together in such a way that they complement one
another, thereby reducing waste and improving growth efficiency. This
combination of sustainability and efficiency is better for the environment than
monoculture — and more profitable, too."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
