VIETNAM: The Thanh Tung Cricket Farm near Ho Chi Minh City breeds crickets to sell to restaurants or to other breeders in neighbouring provinces

In Vietnam, near Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, there's an unusual farm doing a roaring trade - breeding crickets. It's an unusual sight at the Thanh Tung Cricket Farm, 25 km (16 miles) west of Ho Chi Minh City, where owner Le Thanh Tung raises hundreds of thousands of the flying insects in barrels to sell to restaurants or to other breeders in neighbouring provinces. Breeders say the the insects have become "finger food for beer drinkers" in an age of increasing prosperity in Vietnam compared with the recent past when they might have been food for the hungry or for wartime soldiers surviving in the jungle. But even Tung acknowledges they are an acquired taste, "I have been eating crickets for six to seven years now. Its taste is very particular, very special and it smells good and tastes delicious but it is very difficult to compare cricket to other meat," he said. At his small farm and restaurant a menu with photographs of cricket dishes offers "young crickets deep fried", "cricket salad", "breaded cricket", "cricket noodle" and "peppered cricket". In the hot kitchen of the farm's brick-faced building covered by a tin roof, Tung's sister-in-law, Huynh Thi Kieu Oanh, scoops up a colander of crickets from a plastic basin and gently releases them into boiling oil. They sizzle and smoke for five to 10 minutes and she pulls them out. Crunchy crickets are ready. Tung gives his guests six dishes of crickets of various sizes, shapes and colours nestled on long yellow noodles, or battered, or stood on their legs atop a dark-green salad. Vietnamese crickets usually grow to 2.5 cm (0.9 inch) long and the largest can grow up to 4 cm, according to Tung. The story of Tung and his insects is also one of a young entrepreneur who said he had struggled to make a living breeding rabbits and other animals and growing vegetables. He also tried working on construction sites, a common occupation for men his age in Vietnam's rapidly developing cities, but hours were long and wages relatively low. In this country of 83 million with per capita annual income of just 640 U.S. dollars (USD), Tung's cricket business changed his life as his earnings rose way above average. His business grosses an estimated 90 million dong (5,625 USD) a month, before paying salaries to 12 workers and other costs. Tung said buyers pay between 250,000 dong (15 USD) and 450,000 dong (28 USD) per kg of crickets and he can sell about 300 kg a month. By comparison, one kg of chicken costs 70,000 dong (4 USD). Tung said, "The reason that I choose to raise crickets because it's easy to feed them. I don't have to worry about disease and there's a niche in the market, demand is potentially big." Like many Vietnamese of his generation, Tung remembers a childhood fascination with crickets, which they caught to watch them fight for entertainment. After Tung was featured in local media, many other would-be cricket breeders have visited his farm, to buy the insects in the hopes of starting their own farms. "I find that the market is very promising and I also want to try something new and unusual," said Le Quang Khai who rode 340 km on motobike to buy boxes of chirping creatures. In the crowded, narrow streets of the Go Vap district of Ho Chi Minh City, a restaurant called "Cricket" serves the insects cooked in batter or in fish sauce. The restaurant caters mostly to locals, but sometime many tourists from Japan and Korea and even Russia also have come here to eat crickets. For beer- and rice wine-drinking customers, they find that eating cricket dishes is not only tasty, but also low in cholesterol, so they have no fear of gaining weight. Meanwhile back at the cricket farm, young businessman Le Thanh Tung surrounded by the noisy insects dreams of expanding his breeding programme and boosting business in a way that could change his family's lives.

ITN Source | October 14, 2006

Tags:. .estimated. .relatively. .fried. .meat. .provinces