We are visiting an aquaculture farm in Jiadung Township in Pingtung County on Taiwan’s southwest coast. Floating on the artificial pond is a solar-powered water quality monitor. The device tests the water quality every ten minutes, measuring oxygen content, salinity, pH value, temperature and redox potential (ORP). Via the Internet of Things (IoT), the data are automatically uploaded to the main frame and a cloud-based platform, round the clock.

Any abnormal values indicate deteriorating water quality that could cause fry and fish to die. In such an event, the cloud-based platform will immediately send a warning to an app on the mobile phone of Chen Chi-hung, head of the APMG (Agriculture Production and Marketing Group) No. 8 of Aquaculture, Jiadung Township, so that he can immediately rush to the pond, investigate and solve the water quality issue. “Even if I am not in Jiadung, I can immediately ask my father to help me check on the fish pond when I get a notification on my mobile phone,” says Chen.

A smart water quality monitoring device automatically tests the water in the pond round the clock and uploads the results to the cloud. Chen Chi-hung can monitor any adverse changes in real time via a mobile phone app.

Traditional Monitoring is Labor Intensive and Time Consuming

Chen’s family fish farm mainly breeds profitable fishes such as groupers and threadfin. A single aquaculture pond can generate annual earnings worth NT$2 million, but natural disasters and disease also constitute high risks that can jeopardize the entire business. A typhoon, for instance, could cause ponds to overflow, a highly contagious virus could kill an entire fishpond population, or declining oxygen levels due to a defective water wheel could wreak havoc on the fish stock. In such cases, a year’s efforts and investment worth between several million and several tens of millions could be wiped out virtually overnight.  

Therefore, aquaculture farmers are used to keeping a tight watch on their ponds. Often, they do not dare leave their farms just in case there is a situation that needs to be dealt with immediately.

“Turnover is high for people who work at fish ponds part-time. If you hire full-time staff, the older generation worries they will steal technology and become a competitor. Therefore, they would rather look after the ponds themselves,” explains Chen. In 2009, when Chen was 32, he decided to quit his city job and return home to help his father after Typhoon Morakot, one of the deadliest typhoons in Taiwan’s recent history, had left a path of destruction, dealing a heavy blow to fish farmers in Jiadung.

Chen Chi-hung, a former participant in the Council of Agriculture’s Young Farmers’ Counseling Project, notes that technology can improve aquaculture work efficiency and a ratio of fry that reaches marketable size but also entice young people to return to the countryside to take over family farms. (Source: National Development Commission)

Having worked as a supervisor in a company, Chen looked at the business model of traditional aquaculture farms with a different mindset. He discovered that work on the farms was both time consuming and physically demanding, and lacked managerial logic and efficient workflows. For instance, although feeding and patrolling didn’t require much time, such work had to be done intermittently, so farmers were not able to leave the site. The older generation fed their fish based on what they remembered as the previous feeding time, which would often lead to mistakes such as overfeeding. In such cases, the excess fish feed had to be manually skimmed off from the first pond to prevent costly waste and deteriorating water quality, and was then dragged to the next pond for feeding. “The older generation would not systematically teach their children how to raise fish commercially, nor did they have fish farming information that could be handed down. Since coming here to help, I have wanted to find a way out,” says Chen. He feared that, without a second and third generation of fish farmers taking over the business, Taiwan’s aquaculture industry would probably die out. He felt that introducing smart technology was a possible solution to help pass down experience and technical skills.

Chen Chi-hung provides system operators with feedback from fish farmers regarding the system’s performance in daily operations. The feedback is used to optimize mobile app interface features so that a smartphone is all fish farmers need to keep abreast of monitoring, documentation and traceability activities.

Implementing Smart Solutions to Keep Fish Farming Alive 

A popular saying goes: “In order to raise fish, you first need to cultivate the water,” which means that fish only thrive in an aquaculture pond if the water quality is stable. In the past, many fish farmers used to judge water quality with the naked eye instead of using objective scientific measurement methods for observation and documentation over time. As a result, it was not really possible to remain on top of changes in water quality. After consulting his father, Chen obtained a section of the family fish farm to experiment with his own approach. Having obtained a subsidy for smart fish farming facilities from the Fisheries Agency under the Council of Agriculture in 2008, Chen introduced a smart water quality monitoring system.

“After the introduction of the smart water quality system, we went through a period of birth pangs because of the system’s lacking applicability,” recalls Chen. Some of the system operator’s considerations in designing the system were not suitable for fish farming. Given the rough outdoor conditions at the aquaculture ponds, installation of electric wires and cables was not desirable. Also, the fish farmers were not ready to pay additional fees for internet access, and the salinity of the sea water used in the ponds and algae growth would have cause excessive wear and tear on electric devices. Since the original system was not able to meet the needs of the fish farmers, the provider continued to develop and improve it. Eventually, solar panels were chosen to provide the system with electricity to connect to free IoT devices. Materials that are corrosion resistant in salt water were used for exposed parts, and an automatic algae removal function was added as well.

After using the smart water quality monitoring system, the fish farmers were better able to keep abreast of changes in water quality and fish health, which led to a lower mortality rate, declining drug use and a concurrent increase in profitability and in the ratio of fry reaching marketable size. As fish farming profits rose markedly just because of this single change, the older fish farmers gradually came to accept the necessity of introducing smart technology.

Moreover, now that fish farmers were no longer tied down, constantly watching fish and water, they had more free time to spend with their families. Thanks to a better work-life balance, they were able to learn new fish farming knowledge or open up new sales channels, so that many more youngsters were ready to return to Jiadung or to stay there to make a living in the aquaculture business.

Chen, for his part, spends his freed-up time thinking up marketing strategies and promotional campaigns for the APMG’s own brand of seafood, exploring sales channels and promoting educational events about edible fishes. “Giant grouper is usually exported, so the average consumer only knows a little about this fish, a species that we farm ourselves in Taiwan. If we tell the locals to eat giant grouper when exports are not so good, they will tell us that they don’t know this fish species,” says Chen. After the introduction of smart water quality monitoring, the fish farmers now have more time to market giant grouper in Taiwan, expand sales channels, host educational activities about edible fishes or learn new fish farming techniques, and participate in policy discussions with the Fisheries Agency. All of these developments exert a positive influence on the fish farming families as well as the entire industry.

Given that smart technology is advancing fast, the younger fish farmers hope that, once the smart monitoring system technology has matured, big data analysis applications will be added to support decision-making in the industry. This would also help the aquaculture pond management model evolve, thus ensuring seamless succession on family farms. 

From above, Jiadung looks like a giant patchwork with crisscrossing paths holding the aquaculture pond pieces together. Although fish farming is a lucrative business, labor shortages and the rising age of the farmers present challenges. Smart technology applications help modernize traditional fish farming, making it more competitive and more appealing to the younger generation.

Smart Approach to Winning Elders’ Support

Most fish farms in Taiwan are run by older people who were born before the digital age. These fish farmers tend to have reservations about the introduction and application of digital technology, with some even rejecting it outright. In order to overcome such resistance, young people who return to the countryside to assist running the mostly family-run fish farms or prepare to take over from the parent generation follow the principle of “not letting father’s generation put up the money or operate” the new-fangled devices. Instead, they first seek the consent of the older generation for introducing smart water quality monitoring systems on smaller aquaculture ponds on a trial basis, combining their own resources with government guidance and subsidies. Once the ratio of fish reaching marketable size and income markedly increase, they demonstrate the benefits of the new technology to the older generation to convince them to embrace it. Eventually the smart devices can be rolled out across all of the ponds in a fish farm.

About Agriculture Production and Marketing Group (APMG) No. 8 of Aquaculture, Jiadung Township

• Founded: 2015 
• Members: 15, with an average age of below 45
• Technology application: Two young group members have already introduced water quality monitoring systems, and seven more are going to join.
• Business performance: Annual production of the entire group is worth about NT$300 million, and it was honored by the Fisheries Agency as the top-performing APMG nationwide in 2016 and 2017. It also established the Let’s Love Fish brand and won an excellent seafood award for their Southern Pingtung Three Fishes Giftbox.

Translated by Susanne Ganz
Edited by TC Lin, Sharon Tseng
Content sponsored by National Development Commission