The Hindu Business Line : `Asia, Africa yet to exploit opportunity in aquaculture'

FISH may be the most traded commodity internationally but governments in Asia and Africa are yet to exploit the opportunity aquaculture offers in rural development and job generation, according to Dr M. Vijay Gupta, recipient of the 2005 World Food Prize.

Delivering the Millenium Lecture, Fish For All, at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation here today, Dr Gupta said world fish trade was $63 billion in 2003 with Asian countries accounting for $20 billion. Over 40 per cent of the fish production is traded across borders and exports of fish and related products exceed that of meat, dairy, cereals, sugar and coffee.

Asian countries dominate in fish production and of the 104 million tonnes produced in 2003 over 63 per cent was from Asia, which also accounts for 90 per cent of the aquaculture production. Fish culture is entirely in rural areas and concentrated in the developing countries. Aquaculture now accounts for about 35 per cent of the entire production and wild catches are on the decrease because of over exploitation of natural resources. Therefore, culture is bound to increase.

India, a world leader in the 1970s, has slipped with smaller South East Asian countries dominating aquaculture. Thailand and Vietnam export over $ 2.5 billion worth of fish products while India's export is estimated at about $1.5 billion.

The key to exploiting aquaculture for rural development lay in community participation, diversification of numbers of species cultured, integrating with farming systems, improved breeds and efficient marketing. Women can play a central role - they are better fish farmers than men and 60 per cent of the aquaculturists in Bangladesh are women.

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