For years, Ta Thi Thanh Thuy toiled on a sliver of land sandwiched between the Mekong River and the South China Sea, a region widely known as Vietnam's rice bowl, to grow the prized grain.

But Thuy, along with many of her neighbours, has over the past decade completed a production swap - to shrimp - a previously unlikely shift that was spurred by the effects of climate change.

As rising seawaters bring significantly increased salination levels in the Mekong Delta region, the trend toward cultivating shrimp ponds is expected to supercharge the country's seafood industry.

The seawater increase in the delta region has been compounded by the construction of several hyodropower dams upstream, further reducing fresh water flow.

The government has set an ambitious target to more than double shrimp exports from current levels to $10 billion by 2025 and delta farmers have benefited from local authority training sessions and other measures, including some soft loans.

"Life was very hard for us until we began to farm shrimp," Thuy, 52, said. "Many shrimp farmers around here have been able to build nice houses and open saving accounts at banks."


Text by Khanh Vu
Published on Reuters