Not relying on other provinces for loach fry: the profitability of 1,500 square meters in Quang Tri

Quang Tri Province in central Vietnam has published two years of measured figures on the artificial seed production of loach (local name ca chach bun). In a project carried out by the province's sub-department of fisheries and fisheries surveillance from 2025 to 2026, the raising of broodstock, egg collection, and rearing of larvae were completed within the province, and a 1,500-square-meter nursery pond is said to have produced a profit of more than 26 million dong (about 160,000 yen). Loach is also an ingredient for yanagawa-nabe and kabayaki in Japan, but most of what circulates is imported from China and Taiwan, and the domestic product is scarce and expensive. The story of a production area that had been buying seed from other provinces starting to make its own ties directly to the question, for Japanese freshwater-fish buyers, of whether you can trace "where that fish was born."

From raising broodstock to 70 days of rearing: what Quang Tri Province put out in numbers

The project name is "Completing the process of artificial seed production of food-safe loach and raising market fish in Quang Tri Province." The implementing body is the Quang Tri Province sub-department of fisheries and fisheries surveillance, and the site was placed in Long Hung village, Hai Lang commune.

Broodstock were raised from October 2025 to June 2026. Nguyen Duc Trung, deputy head of the sub-department, explains that they raised them in ponds with a bottom mud layer of 20 to 30 centimeters, with the banks firmly packed and taken 0.4 to 0.5 meters above the water surface. Since loach are a fish that burrows into mud, it is a design in which the bottom substrate itself becomes part of the rearing facility, and the premise differs from tank-based intensive aquaculture.

Egg collection was in April 2026. The ovulation rate was 95 to 100%, the fertilization rate 71.1 to 74.7%, the hatch rate published as 60.5 to 64.5%. Larval output per kilogram of spawning females was 45,700 to 47,900 fish. The province's local paper reports an average egg count per fish of 10,140. By calculation about 40% is lost between fertilization and hatching, but the original text does not give water temperature or the number of days. Whether the same rates come out running the same process in a different place cannot be judged from this article.

Rearing began in May 2026. Larvae were stocked in the 1,500-square-meter pond at 500 per square meter, and after 70 days body length grew from 0.46 centimeters to 6.2 centimeters and body weight from 0.04 grams to 2.73 grams. By length that is 0.08 centimeters per day. The survival rate was 30.5%.

Why did the story of "stop buying from other provinces" come up in Quang Tri?

Nguyen Huu Vinh, deputy director of the province's department of agriculture and environment, states that the province has about 6,000 hectares of freshwater aquaculture surface, and explains that making seed locally reduces dependence on other provinces, lowers transport costs, raises seed quality and production efficiency, and increases employment and income. It means that against 6,000 hectares, a state in which supply sources existed only outside the province had continued for a long time.

The structure of relying on outside sources for seed is not limited to this fish. There are also items, such as the giant mottled eel, that rely on wild capture for fry even after 30 years of farming (Juveniles still rely on the sea: the 30-year wall facing a 63-year-old Vietnamese tackling giant mottled eel farming). As long as seed comes from outside, a production area can decide neither its volume nor its price for itself. "Completing the process" is in the project name in order to take that in-house.

The article conveys that rearing was built around biological safety, emphasizing water-quality management and using biological preparations to hold down drugs and antibiotics. The project side's explanation is that if artificial seed circulates, the pressure to capture wild fry also falls.

Let us check the published profitability against the published yields

On economics, profit per 1,500 square meters was published as over 26 million dong and the ratio of profit to cost as 74.5% (three-month rearing). The sale price of fry is 200 dong per fish, about 1.2 yen in Japanese currency.

Here we pause to do the arithmetic. At 1,500 square meters and 500 per square meter, that is 750,000 larvae. At a survival rate of 30.5%, about 229,000 remain, and at 200 dong each that is about 45.75 million dong (about 280,000 yen). If profit is 26 million dong, cost is a little under 20 million dong, and the profit-to-cost ratio considerably exceeds 74.5%. Conversely, working back from 74.5%, cost is about 34.9 million dong, revenue about 60.9 million dong, and dividing by 200 dong gives about 304,000 fish, which pushes the survival rate past 40%.

On either track the published values do not mesh with one another. Was the number stocked not across the full pond? What is included in cost? Is there a volume tier in the unit price? None of that is published, so this 74.5% cannot be carried straight into an investment decision. It is not that the numbers are bad; it is that they cannot be reproduced from public information alone.

What the on-the-ground farmer and the government said, and what they did not

One participating farmer, Van Thi Vinh of Long Hung village, holds three ponds totaling 5,000 square meters. She said, "According to the materials I consulted, with three to four months of rearing, market-size loach yields over 20 tonnes per hectare," and expressed hope that this new farming target would show high effectiveness. The 20 tonnes is a figure she drew from materials, not a result confirmed in her own ponds. The article also conveys, as her view, that the fish has little disease and sells at a higher price than native fish.

Deputy sub-department head Trung said, the article writes, that the success of rearing broadens the target species for freshwater aquaculture and creates conditions for reaching new species and advanced technical processes.

Lining up the statements of the three parties makes clear what is missing. At what price, by whom, and to where the market fish are sold comes out of no one's mouth. The fry price came out at 200 dong, but there is no publication on the outlet for the grown fish. Since the implementing body is a province sub-department, it is also not written who takes over responsibility for supplying seed and market fish after the project ends.

What do these 1,500 square meters mean for Japan's freshwater-fish procurement?

Japan's loach is listed as Near Threatened on the Ministry of the Environment Red List 2020 and as Vulnerable (Class II) on the Osaka Prefecture Red List 2014. The mainstream in the market is imports from China and Taiwan, and the domestic product from Aomori and elsewhere in Tohoku or from Hokkaido fetches high prices. Besides yanagawa-nabe and maru-nabe, demand clings to regional food customs, such as kabayaki in Kanazawa and summer yanagawa-nabe in Niigata. For an item whose supply sources lean toward a particular country, the fact that another production area is building up from seed is a matter of options for the procurement side.

However, procurement that brings in live individuals is asked to account for another axis. Loach is a species distributed from all of Japan to the Korean Peninsula, mainland China, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Myanmar, and within Japan there is concern over competition with the closely related non-native kara-dojo. Since there is the issue of impact on native populations, negotiations premised on live fish tend to stall before price or yield. What can realistically be arranged is trade in processed products such as split, frozen, or seasoned, and in that case what to look at is the factory's management rather than the pond's design.

Where in-house seed production becomes effective is in the point that the traceable range widens. When seed is bought from another province, what water the broodstock were in, what they ate, and what drugs were used on them do not remain in the buyer's records. If the same body runs everything from broodstock raising to rearing on the same land, those records at least gather in the same ledger. In Vietnam, a system of tracking production-area codes by QR has started moving in the fruit field (Vietnam's nationwide system for tracking durian by QR, and how Japan's growing-area verification changes), and the practice of leaving records is itself spreading. But records being in order and satisfying the Japanese side's import procedures or third-party certification requirements are separate matters, and the latter cannot be judged from what is published this time.

When seed starts circulating locally, the way prices swing changes

Vietnam's loach farming has once experienced price swings. The trade journal Tap chi Thuy san Viet Nam reported in a 2020 article that the price, which was 300,000 dong per kg (about 1,850 yen) when it first began appearing, fell to 100,000 to 120,000 dong (about 620 to 740 yen), with some producers struggling to secure buyers. In 2015, responding to inquiries from farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development recommended continuing to raise the fish on the grounds that no new disease had been confirmed, and the market-fish price at the time was given as 120,000 to 200,000 dong (about 740 to 1,230 yen). Being able to make it and being able to sell it are different— in that order, this species has stumbled once.

The same trade journal also touches on information that this fish was brought into Vietnam from Taiwan, and on a point that the relevant scientific name is not included in the list of permitted targets in the agriculture ministry's 2008 Decision No. 57. For buyers who mind the lineage and introduction history, it becomes a checkpoint. In-house seed production itself is advancing across the country, as with the Ho Chi Minh City lab that replaced Taiwan-dependent orchid seedlings with 200,000 a year (Replacing Taiwan-dependent orchid seedlings: a Ho Chi Minh City lab's 200,000 a year), but for edible seafood, if the outlet is poorly designed the inventory remains alive as living creatures.

Even so, if seed circulates locally the way prices swing changes. Moving from a state where stocking times are set by other provinces' operators' inventory to one set by the province's own egg-collection calendar creates room to stagger the periods when shipments concentrate. What Japanese buyers mind is not unit price so much as whether the ordered volume arrives at the ordered time. The fact that a process of collecting eggs in April and rearing from May has been fixed is worth reading off more than the figure of 74.5%.

Items to confirm with the production area before entering negotiations

The right-hand column is the field that published materials alone do not fill. In particular, the fry price and the basis for profitability are something to align the groundwork on before price negotiation.

Summary

What this project showed is one single point: that artificial egg collection and 70 days of rearing of loach ran under the on-the-ground conditions of Quang Tri Province. The fertilization rate of 71.1 to 74.7%, the hatch rate of 60.5 to 64.5%, and the survival rate of 30.5% cannot be moved elsewhere as they are, given the absence of stated conditions. As for the 74.5% of profitability, it cannot even be reproduced from the published values alone.

What Japanese sourcing managers can do now is narrowed to inquiring with the Hai Lang commune site, on the premise of structuring it as a processed product, about the number of participating farmers, the year-round shippable volume, and the 2026 prevailing price for market fish. Since the province sub-department is the point of contact, no volume commitment can be obtained, so one also wants to ask at the same time who becomes the supplying body after the project ends. If considering trade in live fish, the work of sorting out the issue of impact on native populations on the domestic side comes first.

References: Nông nghiệp và Môi trường／Báo Quảng Trị／Tạp chí Thủy sản Việt Nam／CafeF／Ichiba Gyokairui Zukan (Market Fish and Shellfish Encyclopedia)／Osaka Prefectural Research Institute of Environment, Agriculture and Fisheries