Large Catfish Farm & Market: This place was not only a farm but the owner (who had a phat house, obviously loaded; aquaculture has been particularly good to him) had opened a market where farmers could bring fish to him, he would buy it from them, and then sell it about 800km north of there.
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Large Catfish Farm & Mkt - Loading Docks 02
Large Catfish Farm & Market: The loading docks, more fish being loaded, sorted, and unloaded. Here there was *no* fishy smell, i was kinda amazed, fish everywhere but no smell; ya know how to tell if its fresh? bury your face in a bunch of fish, no smell? its really fresh.
Large Catfish Farm & Mkt - Trash Fish & Rice Bran to Feed06
Large Catfish Farm & Mkt - Trash Fish & Rice Bran to Feed06
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.
Large Catfish Farm & Mkt - Trash Fish & Rice Bran to Feed06
Large Catfish Farm & Mkt - Trash Fish & Rice Bran to Feed06
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.
Large Catfish Farm & Mkt - Trash Fish & Rice Bran to Feed07
Large Catfish Farm & Mkt - Trash Fish & Rice Bran to Feed07
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.
Large Catfish Farm & Mkt - Trash Fish & Rice Bran to Feed08
Large Catfish Farm & Mkt - Trash Fish & Rice Bran to Feed08
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.
Friday, February 18, 2005
Second Shrimp Farm - Feed bag w English
Second Shrimp Farm: Here is a bag of the feed they use, mostly Thai but also was one of the few bags i saw that had english on it as well.
Second Shrimp Farm - Government Certification for approved Seed farm 01
Second Shrimp Farm - Government Certification for approved Seed farm 01
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.
Second Shrimp Farm - Netting Sample of Shrimp01
Second Shrimp Farm: This is the guy netting a sample of shrimp for us to look at.
Second Shrimp Farm - Netting Sample of Shrimp03
Second Shrimp Farm: In one cast he netted a buckets worth, more than any of the other operations we went to. Those buggers looked like a pain to untangle from the net.
Second Shrimp Farm - Seed - Artemia 01
Second Shrimp Farm: They raised artemia at another one of thier facilities. This is one of the pools they used.
Second Shrimp Farm - Seed - Artemia 03
Second Shrimp Farm: Here is the artimea seed they used to raise the artemia
Second Shrimp Farm - Seed - Holding Pools 01
Second Shrimp Farm: I don't know what is making the pool reddish but this is a pool full of shrimp fry.
Second Shrimp Farm - Seed - Holding Pools 04
Second Shrimp Farm: Here are some more pools used to raise the shrimp larva/fry
Second Shrimp Farm - Seed - Holding Pools 05
Second Shrimp Farm: And yet another set of pools (for different stages of the life cycle)
Second Shrimp Farm - Seed - pregnant females
Second Shrimp Farm: Here are some mommies with egg sacks ready to pop.
Second Shrimp Farm - Typical motor and aerator 01
Second Shrimp Farm: Here is another typical multipurpose motor, this time powering an aerator.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
MidSized Catfish Operation - aerating chicken oil (reduce smell)
Here he aerated the chicken intestine oil for about a day and that apparently killed the smell. I am not sure why he was so concerned about the smell (I doubt it bothered the fish) but hey, i thought it was neat.
MidSized Catfish Operation - Casava Mash - Chicken Intestine Oil
This guy had an interesting setup, he was also really interesting to talk to (though albeit through an interpreter). He fed primarily cassava mash byproduct (apparently the "juice" from cassava is used as a tapioca substitute, and is exported everywhere, like the Netherlands to Heineken). This is cassava mash (right) and chicken intestine oil (left)
MidSized Catfish Operation - New custom casava and oil mixer and cooker
MidSized Catfish Operation - New custom casava and oil mixer and cooker
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.
MidSized Catfish Operation - old custom casava and oil mixer w 2 stage grinder
MidSized Catfish Operation - old custom casava and oil mixer w 2 stage grinder
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.
MidSized Catfish Operation - Pump for fresh water from canal
MidSized Catfish Operation - Pump for fresh water from canal
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.
NonContract Red Tilapia Operation - Cages 01
This was an independant Red Tilapia farmer who had cage cultures on the river. I didn't know this but apparently Red Tilapia are pretty high value, 35 baht/kg (I knew they were worth more but not that much [these guys can net 600,000 baht a year; thats pretty damn good in Thailand])
NonContract Red Tilapia Operation - Cages 02
Here is another angle of the setup the independant (as opposed to contract) farmer had.
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Thai Aquaculture Tour
I just finished up a whirlwind tour of some aquaculture operations in the Bangkok area (well within 2 hours of bkk). Some of them were really interesting, others hohum. I am going to post pictures (just like the Cambodia thing) over the next few days as I have time. Enjoy!
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Shrimp and Regional Bias
A record-setting billion pounds of shrimp was imported for seafood lovers in the United States United States Southeast Asia . Mangroves are often destroyed to make room for shrimp farms. When they're cut down, a natural barrier to the ocean is eliminated, making it easier for tidal waves to reach the shore. Today, in the United States
But that is a fairly misinformed, super one sided argument; most likely funded by US shrimpers. I have been to shrimp farms, talked with farmers here, none of them use antiobiotics or pesticides. They don't need to, few of the farms had disease problems. I would be willing to bet that western (maybe not european since they are so paranoid about it) producers use as much or more medicines and such than thier poorer asian counterparts (I know this is true in swine production). As with anything, don't read one article and think you know it all.
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Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Cage Culture - The Feed
Remember the splashing blood thirsty catfish? (it was the previous post) well they were thrashing about trying to get to these tasty little rigor mortis morsels. Nope, haven't a clue as to what kinda fish they are but the catfish seemed to approve.
Cage Culture
Here is another cage culture I saw at the "Floating Village" near Siem Reap. I got there just in time for dinner so they were flailing around like made trying to munch on the smaller fishies that were being fed to them. I later found out that they were "Iridescent Shark-Catfish" for those that were curious.
Poultry Feed
While gawking at Layers and Broilers I noticed that the road was strewn with snail carcasses (aka shells). It occurred to me that in many shrimp operations they feed snails for protein so my guess is that they feed snails to the chickens here. Thatâ??s kinda interesting since I have never heard of/seen that before.
Pond Aquaculture
Here is 1 of the 4 aquaculture ponds they have at RDIC. I was told they added goat manure for fertilizer (but given the number of goats I saw etc I will assume that the fertilization was supplementary). They have Tilapia and a few varieties of carp but rely on Silver carp as the cash fish. In one of the ponds (behind me) they had duckweed which they used to feed the other pond(s). One of the biggest problems they have with it is other fish spontaneously appearing in the duckweed pond; they have no idea how, the fish just appear, there is not connection between the ponds its like the fish hoped from one pond to the next, over land.
Palm Candy Production
While running around in Siem Reap we noticed these little tables set out in front of some of the houses in a village we drove through. They were stacked with something wrapped in what looked like palm leaves. Our guide informed us that it was "Palm Candy". He knew exactly where to go, a family had the whole setup right there for people to see, the sap extraction, the boiling down of the sap/syrup etc. Here is a picture of the "packaged" candy. They make it into little wafers and then wrap it up in palm leaves, three of those packages for $1. At first they taste so-so but they are quite addictive (laced with coca?). The taste is similar to maple based candies if you have had those before.
Mid level swine production
This was a pig operation we passed by. It was kind of interesting, a far cry from the huge US farms but a step up (of sorts) from having the pigs running around the yard. They had a compost pile of sorts (to the right, not in the picture) but I saw them spraying off large chunks of manure so I assume that they aren't using the composting all the time. The runoff just pooled up beside the pens, I noticed a very week attempt to dig a trench leading from the pens to what looked like some grapes (some sort of viney things) growing nearby but the runoff wasn't reaching them. I think I liked the Korean method better, and I would think it would be less work.
Low Maintenance Compost
This was a nifty little example of really low maintenance composting at RDIC. You just have your compost "pile" in between your rows of crops and throw on weeds, dirt, and poop as you have time. I do have a few questions about this though; does the composting get particularly hot? it is pretty close to the plants, and temperatures that are too high can be detrimental to plants. If it does not get particularly hot (and it looked like it was pretty loosely maintained and aired out pretty well) does it kill much of the weeds/seeds that are in there (via manure or weeds)? Either way I am sure something is better than nothing.
Monday, February 07, 2005
Layers
Here are some layers, I am sure of that (unlike the broilers). This setup isn't bad, I it would suck to be a layer but in terms of efficiency I have seen much less efficient setups.
Korean No-Smell Sty
So this would be an example of a low-tech solution to piggy stench. They had a demo sty setup using a method that was developed in Korea. Its pretty nifty and simple and I think actually requires less labor. You just make a sty with a deep floor to hold some sort of material (in this case rice hulls). As piggy poops and roots and walks around the poop and peed on material works its way to the bottom. After awhile you have a nice fat piece of unprocessed bacon and a boat load of rich compost! not bad eh?
It kind of reminds me of a setup that was mentioned in Joel F. Salatin's "You can farm". He talks about raising cows and chickens in a barn while occasionally throwing some saw dust and corn kernels on the floor when it gets messy. After the cows are removed put pigs in the barn and they will root for the corn (they can smell and dig, trust me) and as a result you get your compost turned and aerated!
It kind of reminds me of a setup that was mentioned in Joel F. Salatin's "You can farm". He talks about raising cows and chickens in a barn while occasionally throwing some saw dust and corn kernels on the floor when it gets messy. After the cows are removed put pigs in the barn and they will root for the corn (they can smell and dig, trust me) and as a result you get your compost turned and aerated!
Fried Spiders
And the only thing more finger lick'n good than whole fried chicks has got to be fried arachnids. Yep, take a closer look, those suckers (literally?) are big juicy tarantula sized spiders just waiting to be munched on. I have heard about this before, and have seen worse (such is the life of an animal aggie) so I was able to hold my cookies down but whoa to the weak stomached individual that came across this. I am curious what goes into raising these spiders though. Do they catch them? raise them in cages? what do they feed them? How long does it take to get them that large?
Fried Poultry!
Mmmmmmm, nothing like whole fried birdie bites (minus the feathers) at your local bus stop! Yep, we got off the bus (one of many time [but that, and the outhouses at each stop, turned out to be a blessing in disguise due to the bug my intestines were battling]) and deep fried poultry was right there just begging to be bought! No really, I am usually not up for digesting whole birds I can certainly admire cultures that utilize much more of the animals than many some other (more wasteful) cultures do. I am also kinda curious about the economics of this, that is the turn around time has got to be alot shorter especially if these are indeed chicks and not fully mature. Also is there a greater demand for these due to thier being more tender (assuming Khmer care anything about their meat being tender [yes the younger the more tender, same idea as veal]).
Goats
I also visited RDIC (Resources Development International - Cambodia) while in Phnom Penh. They have a bunch of research projects going on, one of them is raising goats and improving the genetics of goats in Cambodia. They also use the goat manure to fertilize the fish ponds. I wonder about the fertilization part though, goats don't poop in large viscous piles like say pigs or cows, they poop pellets. I am curious as to how well these pellets dissolve in the water and how well their nutrients are taken up compared to bovine manure.
Fishery Museum: Exhibit 6
This is a miniature of some of the cage fish farming setups they had in the area. I passed by one from a distance but the picture from my dinky 3 megapixel 3x zoom camera just wasn't decipherable but you get the idea here right?
Fishery Museum: Exhibit 5
Mmmmmm snakes, the thought of munching on a slithering leg-less reptile appeals to me only slightly more than say deep fried spiders (though I did have some sort of snake in China, not bad but not something I can't wait to try again either). They didn't have much info on this guy, perhaps it was there more for tourist-shock-value than anything else (kinda like the crocs).
Fishery Museum: Exhibit 4
I wish I had a higher resolution camera but oh well. This is just a list of all the fish native to the area (or so I was told).
Fishery Museum: Exhibit 3
Nope, no fish in this picture. They are busy gasping for breath in the corner of the tank (I don't think the museum staff was too worried about their more "common" exhibits just croaking when they could easily replace them). I took this picture because these fish are the exact same type as the ones I took of a cage aquaculture in another place; apparently "Iridescent Shark-Catfish", or to me just plain ole' catfish.
Fishery Museum: Exhibit 2
I didn't get the name of this one but it isn't alive either, I just wanted to get a picture of it because it looked like the star of some oceanic horror film. It will certainly make me think twice about dipping my toes in murky SE Asian lakes (doesnâ??t it look like something that would take off with small children if it was alive and had the chance?).
Fishery Museum: Exhibit 1
This is apparently a "Small Scale Croaker". I am not sure if you can see from the picture but this is a whopper of a fish (for a guy who doesn't know much about fish). I would estimate that it is a good 30+lbs. In case you are wondering its not alive, but could probably use a change of formaldehyde (or water?)
Fishers
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.
While around the "floating village" (about 30 minutes outside Siem Reap) we saw *tons* of people fishing with nets. It made me wish I knew more about different fishing methods because I could tell there was a difference in the nets (I saw variations on the two that I posted here).
Crocodiles for Tourist
This couldn't have been a real setup, it was on a boat in the middle of a lake, the logistics would be a nightmare (or so I would think). None the less they had a few crocs in the hold (I guess that is the right terminology) of the ship/house so tourist could look down at them from the deck. Our croc raising tour guide confirmed what I thought earlier, they would just be too much trouble. But there were some tourist there buying cokes for $1+/can so I am betting they are still making a nice living.
Crocodile Farm
Well turned out that our brother of a friend tour guide raised crocs on the side. It was really quite interesting and apparently more lucrative than I thought (about $200 a head at 50lbs/head selling for over a $1k/head once large enough). This was a small operation, only 30 head of crocs, with a total capacity of 40 max. I didn't get pictures of them but i am standing above the crocodile "stalls" where they have bedding that, come time to lay eggs, they pile up into a nest. This guy sells the eggs, apparently he does not find it worth it to raise them from eggs to a skinning size.
Crocodiles & Fishies
Well of course my camera would crap out after I got pictures of all the cool man-eating reptiles... oh well. Anywho on the other side of the wall was a pond filled with Tilapia fish. They fed some sort of grass to the fish, let them breed like rabbits for a week at a time and then once a week scoop out the larger ones and dump them on this side of the wall as crocodile munchies. The owner said he was quite impressed with tilapia in terms of their being so easy to raise. Really I have only read one other instance of tilapia being raised as animal feed (the other was for fish meal [which I question the economics of]). Apparently they are the cheapest source of protein in the area, trumping even offal.
Cage Aquaculture?
At first (from a distance) I thought this was a ship but upon closer inspection i figured it would be a bit porous for a ship. It ended up being a cage culture and you can almost see some sort of vegetation they were growing as well, mind you this is in the middle of a lake. I wanted to get closer but trying to get this across to our boat guy didn't seem worth it (plus we had a limited amount of time).
Broilers?
While wandering around Siem Reap we noticed a sign that said something about chickens so we decided to check it out (trespassing?). The setup was fairly rudimentary but I have seen much worse. This seemed to be for broilers but I am not sure since these would make for fairly anorexic broilers (plus I know little about poultry in general)
Sunday, February 06, 2005
Agriculture in Cambodia
I recently got back from Cambodia and took some photos of the Ag related stuff I saw. The following is some pictures i took and brief explaination of each.
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