Training of Trainers - Library - Network of Aquaculture Centres in ...

financial performance of the shrimp aquaculture industry has been impressive, its rapid growth has led to anumber of technical, environmental, economic and social problems, which have been widely reported. In recenttimes environmental and economical limitations associated with the development of the shrimp aquaculture havebecome more pressing, and would hamper its growth if not addressed adequately.In general, because of their relatively high price, sales of shrimp products suffer during an economic crisisbecause consumers have lower purchasing power and they tend to be more careful regarding the quality of theproduct. Further to this current market trend indicates that competition has significantly increased in world shrimpmarkets, as many Asian countries expand shrimp culture. Oversupply of cultured shrimp products in the globalmarket has already occurred and consequently, market prices of shrimp have dropped and profit margins havebeen squeezed. Relatively high production costs as well as receiving the lowest average shrimp price perkilogram, the intensive shrimp farming in Thailand has comparatively become less lucrative and in many casesneutral, and the most affected group are the small-scale shrimp farmers. Given significant differences in the coststructures and access to market industrial shrimp farms always have competitive advantage over the small-scaleshrimp farms and thus, they can position themselves better to cope up with the market eventuality.On the other hand, increased international interest in environment and seafood safety has resulted in developmentof variety of standards and guidelines for shrimp farming, and thus, making it difficult for the small-scale shrimpfarmers to understand and adopt the new standards being laid mostly by the importing nations. This is particularlycritical for Thailand, where about 80% of the total shrimp farms belong to small-scale farmers and about 85% ofthe farmed raised shrimp is meant for export. Small-scale shrimp farmer lacks capital education and the motivationto accept the changes under the current conditions of the market. While most small-scale shrimp farmers areaware of the risks in business, majority are not able to adopt the standards. It is a challenge for the government aswell as the society to full fill aspirations of thousands of small-scale shrimp farmers and therefore, intervention tosupport their capacity development on various environmental, food safety and market access related issue arehighly desired.Research and development accomplishmentsFarming of marine shrimp has been successful in Thailand because climatic conditions mean that two or morecrops per year are possible and also because of government support for the industry. Historically, a steady priceand a large demand for shrimp from Japan, US and Europe prompted the Department of Fisheries, Thailand topromote semi-intensive marine shrimp farming as early as 1973 through the establishment of hatcheries to helprelieve the fishing industry (Flaherty and Karnjanakesorn, 1995). But intensive shrimp farming arrived in Thailandduring the 1980s and it quickly became an important export industry. During the period of 1987–1991, there waswidespread intensification of shrimp farming and by 1994, 80% of the shrimp farms in Thailand were intensive(Dierberg and Kiattisimkul, 1996). Almost all the exported shrimp from Thailand are raised on earthen shrimpponds as the number of farms has increased from 3,045 farms in 1978 to 33, 444 in 2005, covering 71, 825 ha(DOF, 2007).Progression of shrimp farming development in Thailand reflects continuous improvement in methods of hatching,producing, harvesting, transporting, processing, marketing and exporting cultured shrimp. Despite thetechnological improvements evident suggests that shrimp farming development coincides with the pollution of theculture water which poses long term environmental risks (Piedrahita, 2003). Naylor et al. (2000) observed thatwhile technology exists to reduce outputs from shrimp ponds, such as water treatment and pond lining, or eventhrough culturing different organisms such as herbivores, these are seldom employed. Certainly, intensive shrimpfarming is heavily dependent on the environment, particularly when it does not invest in water and pondmanagement treatment facilities. The other important issue is quality and safety of the product, which has led tothe development of several strict measures and standards by the importing countries to be implemented by theshrimp producers. To adapt the standards in addition to knowledge shrimp producers need capital investment toimprove the infrastructure, which the small-scale farmers largely lack.64