ASA/WISHH’s Commercialization of Aquaculture for Sustainable Trade-Cambodia announces a CAST partner has expanded his fish farm to launch Cambodia’s first commercial hatchery to spawn soy-fed striped snakehead fish. Ung Kimly, owner of Sopheak Mongkul Farms, is active in WISHH’s USDA Food for Progress CAST-Cambodia Project. Kimly’s brood stock came from a CAST pilot demonstration. He also participated in a 2022 snakehead fish feeding trial, funded in part by the Illinois Soybean Association to evaluate whether the carnivorous fish species can be trained to eat soy. Based on the positive results of the demonstration and Cambodia’s promising aquaculture potential, he is expanding to sell soy-fed fingerlings as well as raise them to market weight. Kimly has purchased over 2000 25kg. (55lb.) bags of feed this season, with more on the way for his hungry fish. “My goal is to produce one million snakehead fingerlings with our brood stock,” says Kimly. “The market in Cambodia is very large for this fish.”
He will grow snakehead to market weight using 16 of the in-pond raceway systems that WISHH developed with support from the Missouri Soybean Merchandising Council. WISHH designed the IPRS to meet the specific needs of Cambodian farmers who face both extreme wet as well as dry seasons. A Cambodian organization, Made for This Manufacturing, is now building and marketing the fourth generation of these IPRS. WISHH’s United Soybean Board project is assisting Made for This Manufacturing in providing aquaculture extension service to farmers, such as Kimly. Made for This Manufacturing worked with Kimly on the installation of 16 of the raceways in a single row, which demonstrates that the innovative raceways are effective at a larger scale. Soybean meal-based floating fish feed is key to the rapid growth of the fish inside the raceways.
Made for This Manufacturing is also using some of their own IPRS in their nursery ponds to grow the fingerlings to larger size and sell to other IPRS customers.