On September 22, 2026, the Vietnamese seafood trade outlet Tepbac ran a column dealing with nothing but the psychology of shrimp farmers. The headline was 'Throughout a crop, the pond never leaves my mind.' Placed not on the news page but in an op-ed section called 'Góc nhìn' (Perspective), it was signed by Phong. Neither unit prices nor export values appear; it writes only about the state of mind in which farmers spend the three to four months from stocking to netting. For Japanese buyers sourcing Vietnamese shrimp, it is material for understanding the state of the party on the other side of a price negotiation.
A seafood outlet wrote, in its op-ed section, about the three to four months when the pond never leaves your mind
Not a reported article, but an op-ed signed 'Phong'
The original is not a reported feature but a lineup of the ways farmers the author knows behave. It opens with the line: 'When an outsider looks at a pond, all they see is the water surface, the paddlewheels, a few machines, and three or four months of production.' The farmer thinks about the pond even while eating, opens the weather on the phone wherever they go, and wakes at the sound of heavy rain at night. The first thing done in the morning is not coffee but going out to the pond to look at the water, the paddlewheels, and the shrimp.
Tepbac's operator, the Tepbac company, sells aquaculture-management apps, automatic feeders, automatic control panels, environmental meters, and testing services under the Farmext brand name, and that product range lines up in the menu at the top of the article. The original closes with 'if you can know early, track clearly, and control well, you might not have to keep the pond in your head for all four months,' landing on the value of monitoring and record-keeping. The value of the psychological portrait does not diminish, but it is worth reading with the awareness that the writer's side has those products to sell.
Losing close to 10 kg in four months is the story of one person the author knows
The most concrete passage in the original is about body weight, but it is easy to misread. The original writes, 'An Ba, whom I know, can lose close to 10 kg over a four-month crop.' This is neither an industry average nor a survey result but the story of one acquaintance of the author, and the figure is not '10 kg' but 'close to 10 kg,' written moreover with the qualifier 'can lose.' It is accompanied by descriptions of food not tasting good, shallow sleep, and days of waking in the middle of the night to walk a lap around the pond, and it says that for the two months after selling off, he goes out drinking almost daily, joking to himself that it is 'making up for the four months spent living with the pond.'
Two others appear. 'Anh Tu' in Ca Mau Province barely leaves the farm for the duration of a crop — not because there is nowhere to go, but because he thinks, 'what if something happens while I am away.' 'Chu Hai' in Can Gio, even while he knows that replacing a makeshift piece of equipment would cut both labor and electricity costs, will not touch it while the shrimp are doing well. 'It is running fine, so why mess with it. It is bad luck.' All are given only by nickname.
The same seed, the same feed, the same density, yet the result changes, the original writes
The next pond over hit, while mine missed
What the original repeats is the sense that effort and result do not correspond. 'This year too, the same seed, the same feed, the same density, the same staff, yet the result is different.' From this accumulation, the author writes, many people arrive at the conclusion that 'shrimp farming has become far harder than before.' The order is one in which investment rises and machines and medicines increase, yet only certainty declines.
The amounts, too, are written with a range. The original says that, riding on a single crop, there are 'several hundred million dong for some ponds, several billion dong for some farms' (vài trăm triệu đồng / vài tỷ đồng), leaving the expression ranged. At the exchange rate as of September 25, 2026 (¥1 ≈ 164 dong), 100 million dong is about ¥610,000 and 1 billion dong about ¥6.1 million. The case where about 2 billion dong was invested to rebuild ponds destroyed by a typhoon —a high-tech farm in Nghe An Province— fills in what kind of on-the-ground story this 'several billion dong' refers to.
'Don't fix it when it's running well' — superstition or loss aversion?
The original also gives examples of superstition: avoiding certain dates for stocking, not letting outsiders into the pond. The author explains this as 'often just not wanting to be the person who changed something right before, if something goes wrong with the crop.' The motive is not wanting to be where the loss is pinned.
Recast into buyer practice, it means there are periods when negotiating a spec change does not go through easily. Requests such as how to keep feeding records, how to retain the usage history of medicines, and the measurement items per pond meet stronger resistance the further into a crop they are brought. A proposal to switch gets through more easily when put out during the gap between harvest and the next stocking. The situation of rising feed production within producing areas can be followed the CP aquaculture feed plant that went into operation in Ca Mau province from here.
Shrimp exports were US$3.3 billion for January–August — figures taken separately from the column
China and Hong Kong grew 35.9%, while the U.S. and the EU fell
Because the column carries no statistics, the export-side figures for the same period were taken separately. They are a value-based tally based on Vietnam Customs data, published by the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) on September 23, 2026.
| Category | Value (cumulative January–August 2026) | Year on year |
|---|---|---|
| Total shrimp export value | US$3.3 billion | +12% |
| of which whiteleg shrimp | over US$2 billion | +7.6% |
| of which black tiger | about US$318 million | +7.4% |
| China + Hong Kong | about US$1.12 billion (34.1% share) | +35.9% |
| US | US$436.1 million | −11.7% |
| EU | US$355.3 million | −3.6% |
| Japan | US$388.5 million | +6.1% |
The total for August alone was US$478.5 million, up 4.2% year on year. The single-month growth fell well short of the cumulative (+12%), and VASEP itself points to the slowing growth and the widening gaps between markets. The U.S. was down 12.6% in August alone and the EU down 23.5% in August alone — a deeper drop than in the cumulative.
Exports to Japan were US$388.5 million, up 6.1%
Exports to Japan were firm, up 6.1% in value. That, however, is the performance of exporting companies, not the profitability of individual ponds. While export value grows in double digits, the column from the same period writes that many farmers arrive at the conclusion that 'it has become harder than before.'The two differ in both source and nature, and their relationship is only that this article sets them side by side as being from the same period. The growth is supported by the surge toward China and Hong Kong, and markets that compete on price and markets chosen on requirements are separating. As an entry to the latter, the case of a shrimp-farming cooperative in Ca Mau Province obtaining ASC certification— moves to use third-party certification as a passport are emerging.
Indian farmers warn of a stocking halt — but it is not a decision
A proposal drawn up by an Andhra Pradesh association on September 7
As VASEP reported on September 22, 2026, an aquaculture farmers' association in Andhra Pradesh, India, drew up a proposal at a September 7 meeting to halt stocking for the three months of April–June 2027. Implementation has not been decided. It is a conditional warning that they will carry it out if requests, such as setting a minimum support price, are not addressed by the end of September. The association's chairman, G. Gandhi Bhagavan Raju, explains that while rising input prices for feed and medicines and a decline in seed quality squeeze finances, shipping prices have fallen sharply.
A high court provisionally halted the feed price increase
On September 8, the Andhra Pradesh High Court provisionally stayed a price increase for shrimp feed, ordering each company to hold the prices notified on June 12 until a new ruling is issued. At issue was a proposed increase of 9,000 rupees per tonne for whiteleg-shrimp feed and 12,000 rupees per tonne for black-tiger feed, which at the exchange rate as of September 25, 2026 (1 rupee ≈ ¥1.66) come to about ¥15,000 and about ¥20,000 respectively. The next hearing is scheduled for September 30; it is not a finalized ruling.
In Andhra Pradesh, the pressure of rising costs and falling prices surfaced through the collective channels of an association and a court. What Tepbac's column describes is the figure of a farmer glued to the pond while holding the anxiety inside the individual. Whether a producing area's pressure surfaces as collective action changes how supply is read.
What Japanese buyers can check before price
An 'operator who cannot leave the pond' is the very thing that makes supply hard to read
Recasting the original's description into the language of sourcing, a farm whose operator cannot leave the site for a whole crop can be read as relying on a person's constant presence to detect abnormalities. Conversely, a farm that records environmental data so that anyone looking can make the same judgment can, at the same scale, offer a readable lead time and yield. The demand the original writes at the end — 'I want to know, to reduce guesswork' — points in the same direction as what buyers ask of traceability.
Four items you can ask before looking at a price list
| Item to confirm | Example of how to ask | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Method of detecting abnormalities | With what dissolved oxygen and water temperature are measured, and where they are recorded | Whether it depends on constant human presence or can be run on records |
| Crop boundaries | When the next stocking and harvest are scheduled | The timing when a spec-change proposal can be made |
| Handling of failed crops | What caused the ponds that did not go well recently | Whether they can put the cause into words |
| How funding rides on it | Whether feed is paid in cash or on an agent's credit | Room to respond to price negotiation |
The last item corresponds directly to the original. The original lists, as the breakdown of a failure, 'feed debt, debt to the agent, and electricity costs,' presuming a structure in which feed piles up on credit. A farm carrying credit debt finds it hard to choose its own buyer at harvest.
The next move to add is to ask about the ponds that did not go well last year
What the original writes most weightily is that even when they fail, they do not know the cause. 'Often one does not know exactly where one went wrong.' In a negotiation you can use this in reverse. Everyone has a story ready about a crop that went well, but few counterparts can explain, for a crop that did not go well, when, which indicator, and how it moved. The resolution of that explanation is itself the reliability of the volume you will receive next year. In addition, it is worth visiting once while a crop is running. The way of being glued to it that the original describes becomes visible if you stand beside the pond in that period.
