Tien Giang (VNS/VNA) - Clam farmers in the Mekong Delta province ofTien Giangare finding innovative solutions to produce sustainable value chains in an aimto meet international standards.

In recent years, declining fishery stocks, disease, andenvironmental impacts have affected both quantity and quality of clams(meretrix lyrate) in the province.

To improve value and enhance the competitiveness of localclam farming, a new project has begun since 2013, according to Nguyen Tien Diet, head of Fisheries Divisionunder the province’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD).

Under the project, Tan Thanh communeauthorities in Go Cong Dong district and local clamfarmers are working together to achieve the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)certification, which is the world’s most credible and recognised standard forenvironmentally sustainable wild-caught seafood.

Nguyen QuocMinh, Vice Chairman of  the Tan Thanh commune People’s Committee, said six community-based groups of clam farmershave been established in the locality, including 150 households that arebreeding clams on 1,600ha.

Each group has a leader and a management board who work asvolunteers without a salary.

Tran VanChi, 65, alocal clam breeder, said the current price of fresh clams is around 20,000 VND (0.88 USD) per kilo.

Clam farmers can earn a profit of 50 million VND (2,190 USD) per hectare eachyear, making up about 40 percent of local farmers’ incomes, he said.

To achieve those results, the commune’s clam farmingsector has worked for over four years to achieve the MSC standards, but fundsare still needed to see the completion of the certificate issuance from MSC.

Meanwhile, earlier in 2009 Ben Tre Province’s small-scale, community-based clamfishery sector became the first one in Southeast Asia that met MSC standardsand was granted the certification.

Ben Tre’s MSC certification process was co-sponsored by the province’sDARD and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Local co-operatives in the province have closely managedand carefully surveyed the brood stock and harvestable clams within their area.

Tran Thu Nga, Director of the Centre for Transfer of Technology – Services andCommunity Development for Vietnamese Agriculture – Fisheries under the VietnamFisheries Society, said the seafood sector faces challenges in finding marketsas well as environmental concerns.

The MSC Fisheries Standard helps cope with the globaltrend of over-fishing and the degradation of the marine environment.

“The MSC certification will help local clam breeders reachout to consumers worldwide,” Nga said.

Raising local residents’awareness of sustainabledevelopment plays an important role in building a sustainable production modelin Ben Tre province, Nga added.

Clams are one of five key fishery products in the provincebesides tra fish, tiger prawns, blue-legged prawns and white-legged shrimp, Nguyen Van Buoi, Deputy Director of Ben Tre province’s Department ofAgriculture, said.

“Over the past 10 years, local clam farming has increasedsignificantly in productivity, especially of clam seeds,” he added.

Covering 65km of coastal areas, the province is home toover 4,000 hectares of clam farming, mostly in Ba Tri, Binh Dai and Thanh Phu districts.

Working with their farmers, the cooperatives can produceabout 4,500-5,000 tonnes of fresh clams per year, Buoi said.

MSC certification has helped increase the local clam priceby 5,000-10,000 VND (0.22-0.44 USD) per kilo compared to the clam rates harvested by other localities inthe country.

The cooperatives’average annual revenue in recent yearshas risen to 75 billion VND (3.3 million USD) and even jumped to 110 billion VND (4.8 million USD), greatly improving their members’incomes.-VNA