4 - Central Institute of Brackishwater Aquaculture

National Workshop-cum-Training on Bioinformatlu and Information Management in Aquaculture
ROLE OF SOCIOECONOMIC AND FARM
SPECIFIC VARIABLES I N AQUACULTUE- AN
ECONOMETRIC APPROACH
1. 1 Introduction
India is endowed with freshwater aquaculture resources of 2.35 million hectare
of ponds and tanks, 1.3 million hectare of oxbow lakes and derelict waters, 0.19
million km of rivers and canals, 3.15 million ha of reservoirs (Anon, 2006 a),
Ponds and tanks are the prime resources for aquaculture, however only about
0.8 - 0.9 million ha is used for aquaculture currently. Indian aquaculture has
demonstrated a six and half fold growth over the last two decades with
freshwater aquaculture contributing over 95% of the total aquaculture
production. Three Indian major carps namely catla (Catla catla), rohu (Labeo
rohita) and mrigal (C. mrigala) contribute O/O the bulk of production of over 1.8
million tones (FAO, 2005). The technologies of induced carp breeding and
polyculture in static ponds and tanks virtually revolutionized the freshwater
aquaculture sector raising the average Indian production from still water ponds
from 600 kg/ha/yr in 1970 to over 2200 kg/ha/yr at present and turned the
sector into a fast growing industry. Research and development activities by
Government of India through establishment of Freshwater Aquaculture Research
Institute and network of Fish Farmers Development Agencies have been the
principal vehicles for this development besides additional support by several
other organizations, departments and financial institutions. Latest development
in this sector is the establishment of National Fisheries Development Board with
huge budget provision to improve production, processing, storage, distribution
and marketing of fisheries products (Anon, 2006 b). The total aquaculture
production of 2.47 million tones that constitute 4.2O/o of global production was
valued at US$ 2.9 billion tones (FAO, 2006). If aquaculture is to play a vital role
in ensuring future fish availability for food security and nutrition in India, this
sector has to develop and grow in an economically viable and environmentally
sustainable fashion. That is possible through improved water management,
better feeding strategies, genetic improvement of cultivable species and better
health management leading to enhanced productive efficiency of aquaculture at
farm level. Therefore measuring Technical Efficiency (TE) at farm level identifying
factors associated with efficient production and assessing potential for and
sources of future improvements are need-of-the-hour for establishing sustainable
aquaculture. Instead of increasing the use of inputs to increase production,
efforts should be made towards output growth through improved TE, which
means to produce more by utilizing inputs at hand more efficiently.
Keeping these points in view, an attempt was made to estimate the technical
efficiency of aquaculture farms of Kolleru Lake area, which is known as the Carp
Pocket of India, producing an estimated 70,000 tonnes per year (Anjaneyulu, Y.,
' Correspondence: Ex. Coordinator, BTIS & Head Social Science Section; Central
Institute of Freshwater Aquaculture Kausalyaganga, Bhubaneswar-751002, India
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