AbstractsBusiness Management & Administration

The future viability of the frog farming industry in Tien Giang Province and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam :

by Minh Quang. Nguyen




Institution: Central Queensland University
Department:
Year: 2014
Keywords: Frogs.; Aquaculture; 070401 Aquaculture.; Aquaculture  – Frog farming  – Risk management; Thesis; Book. e-thesis
Record ID: 1054726
Full text PDF: http://hdl.cqu.edu.au/10018/1025709


Abstract

This thesis concerns a strategy to assure the future viability of the frog farming industry in Tien Giang province and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Privately operated frog farms are a relatively recent phenomenon in Vietnam with the potential to make a significant contribution to the Vietnamese economy and poverty reduction. Frog meat export (especially to China) is a potential growth export industry for Vietnam. However, frog farmers in Tien Giang province and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, face various risks but lack frog farming quality standards and risk management strategies to overcome these. This thesis identifies the production, market, political risks and environmental risks facing Vietnamese frog farmers. These are sub-categorized according to eight key issues for research: site location, species farmed, brood stock, farming techniques, disease, price fluctuations and government regulation. The thesis employs qualitative research founded on a constructivist interpretivist paradigm. The context of the research is Tien Giang Province and Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam. An evaluative framework is established to conduct interviews a sample of eighteen frog farmers, four frog dealers, seven government officials and four agricultural university academics in the selected locale. The research outcomes reveal that frog farming of the sample researched in the main is typified by ad hoc site selection, poor quality species selection and brood stock, ill-informed farming techniques and disease management, environmental pollution, uncoordinated and corrupt market practices, and risk to consumer health and safety. In short, there is minimal government control or regulation of the frog farming industry investigated. The research elicits forty-eight risks facing frog farming in the research sample. These risks are structured into quality standards and a risk management strategy towards the adoption of industry certification ecolabelling as defined by the Fisheries and Aquaculture Organization of the United Nations in order to assure the future viability of frog farming in Tien Giang province and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.