Principles of Aquaculture

FMA2001 (2+1)
LU 4: Factors affecting successful
aquaculture I
Learning Outcomes
Factors affecting successful aquaculture
1. Socio-economics factors
2. politics and legislation
Socio-economics
• Social relating to society, the people living together within an area.

• Economic social science concerned with the production, distribution

and consumption of goods and services.

• Socio-economics The interaction or interrelation between social

behavior and economics
Politics and legislation

• Politics the activities associated with the governance of a country

or area.

• Legislation laws, the process of making laws

What are the factors affecting successful
aquaculture?
1. Social impact (nutritious food, food security, employment
(production, processing, distribution),

2. Social risk (Environmental cost: conversion of mangroves, cropland

to fishpond, use of ground and surface water (saltwater intrusion,
salinization of aquifers, reduced crop irrigation land subsidence),
effluent discharge)

3. Social responsibility
Gender relations
• Aquaculture development may affect divisions of labour and access to
resources between men and women.

• Culture plays a central role in determining appropriate gender roles in

production, processing, distribution, and marketing of fish or other products.

• Women may gain additional responsibilities in production systems oriented

toward household consumption or sales within the immediate community
Gender relations
• Men may play a more central role in activities associated with
production of goods destined for more distant commercial markets.

• Since household expenditures in many rural cultures are the domain

of women, increased availability of money may be used for
household needs, improving the welfare of the family
Infrastructural development
• Aquaculture development also may require physical and economic infrastructure
including roads and markets for both inputs and products.

• Such roads may have important indirect consequences for local communities
• opening up market channels of other goods from the community to wider markets

• allowing the penetration of new commercial goods into previously isolated rural areas

• improved access to labour markets, health care facilities

• educational opportunities for local residents.

Food supply
• Aquaculture contributes towards the high-quality animal protein for direct human
consumption.

• Fish is the only affordable source of animal protein available to the poor in some parts of the
world.

• Small-scale aquaculture generates food for the producer’s household and in the immediate
community, and thus contributes to social resilience (ability to cope with external stress/
disturbances).

• When aquaculture production is geared towards national urban and international markets,
local people earn incomes sufficient to purchase foods produced elsewhere.
User conflicts
• Aquaculture development can generate conflicts between competing users
and uses of land and water resources.

• Upstream and downstream water users affect or are affected by aquaculture.

• Conflicts also arise when property rights are unclear. Mangroves typically are
public lands only loosely managed by governments.

• Mangrove conversion into shrimp ponds was a widespread problem during

the 1980s in Southeast Asia and threatened the resilience of local social
systems .
Balances in wealth, income, and power
• leads to extremes of inequality in wealth and income, and
particularly if such economic inequality is used to establish political
power and make rigid class distinctions.

• People who become marginalized will resort to increasingly

desperate means of survival, including destructive fishing activities
(corrupt political systems set policies and issue permit; producers
can be vulnerable to forces beyond their control).
Balances in wealth, income, and power
• Poor people - traditional integrated aquaculture systems limited
access to land and/or water.

• Increase income = invest in more inputs = specialize in fish

production = decrease integration with agriculture and animal
husbandry.

• Traditional integrated systems may be environmentally sustainable

but not economically sustainable.
Access rights and economies of scale
• Governments must ensure that the economic success of aquaculture does not lead to
appropriation of productive resources by the rich and powerful. It is also essential that the poor
and disadvantaged are included in decision-making relating to standards for both aquaculture and
the wider environment.

• To farm fish requires access to resources, and specifically to land and water. As for almost all
forms of enterprise, there are therefore barriers to entry for the poorest.

• Cage and pen culture in ponds, rivers and lakes requires relatively modest start up investment
and in this sense is pro-poor but there are economies of scale, and small-scale producers usually
start at a disadvantage.
Access rights and economies of scale

• these small farms have generally faded away, the level of investment
and return were inadequate, even for the poorest, to encourage the
required level of commitment and husbandry.

• Furthermore, few poor farmers had tenure or even secure access to a

water body. Larger cages belonging to better of members of society
with clear access rights are on the other hand increasing in numbers.
The disparities between rich and poor remain.
Effects of limited entry
• While there is the need to limit entry into fish farming in a bounded system such as
a lake or reservoir with finite environmental capacity, this has possible implications
for both equity and poverty.

• If limits to entry are established, then those already operating become a privileged
elite.

• If on the other hand a market is created and user rights are sold or auctioned, then
the poor are immediately at a disadvantage. Any kind of limit therefore becomes
disadvantageous to the poor, and government is again faced with a dilemma.
Land value
• Successful aquaculture, like any other business tends to have both
positive and negative knock on effects.

• Fish farming usually leads to an increase in income per unit area of land,
and therefore drives up the price or rental value of land.

• This benefits the landed and further excludes the landless.

• On the other hand, it may lead to an increase in employment per unit

area of land, thus providing a livelihood for the landless.
Use of low value as feed
• Bycatch (low priced species ) as feed for aquaculture organisms. low priced species
key source of high-quality nutrition for poor people.

• Integrated aquaculture: local recycling and integration may be efficient according

to some criteria BUT it has lower production than intensive aquaculture and is
often associated with significant labour and management costs.

• Integrated systems cannot respond to market demand. They should not therefore
be promoted as the “solution to pollution” without very careful economic analysis.
Aquaculture for community development
• If aquaculture is planned as grow-out operations using a feedlot concept, then the benefits to
communities are small.

• However, if aquaculture is planned as community-based development of a highly integrated,

local operation, then employment opportunities and the potential for positive community
impacts increase dramatically.

• Aquaculture can play an important economic role by creating new economic niches by
generating employment in areas where there are few alternate job choices, by providing local
sources of high-quality food, and opportunities for attractive investments for local entrepreneurs
to invest in the local economy, thereby increasing local control over economic development.
Aquaculture for community development
• Aquaculture depends on various communities which can be a vital part
of an ecological system that can be planned and organized for
community-based aquatic foods production and natural ecosystem
rehabilitation, reclamation and enhancement rather than degradation.
• inputs from various food
• processing
• transportation
• Processing of contaminated waste waters
• fish wastes processing
Social and economic monitoring

• Many economic, social and welfare indicators are routinely collected by government
agencies and local government as routine input to policy decisions. These may
include such indicators as employment, GDP, per capita product, education, health,
health and education provision and average wage.

• Monitoring issues such as conflict is more difficult and can only be assessed based
on long-term consultation and participation. Local and provincial government
commonly has expertise in social and economic monitoring, and existing capacity
should be strengthened rather than substituted under any new initiative.
Social and economic monitoring
• Social indicators are job availability, compensation rates, benefits,
worker safety; safety of aquaculture products and animal welfare to
ensure high standards for public health, animal health and animal
welfare; and improving governance. Economic indicators are
profitability, risk, efficiency, and marketing issues.
Politics and legislation

• Politics the activities associated with the governance of a country

or area.

• Legislation laws, the process of making laws

• Ocurence and importance of aquaculture based on local demand
and suitablility of location.

• Government constrain development geographically limited the

development.

• development of aquaculture linked to actions and policies outside

the immediate sector.

• stakeholder with little interest in aquaculture have profound impacts

through their actions
• Eg: the Kingdom of Thailand, set the course for development of the
Chaopraya Delta as a major aquaculture zone.

• Eg: The Water Boards in the People's Republic of Bangladesh decide

to have the shrimp and prawn indsutry in the Southwest of the
country.
• External interventions by government or non-government
organizations for rural development and poverty alleviation -->
Aquaculture projects set up in low income area but ignored other
key criteria such as water supply, soil type, topography, access to
markets, feed and seed supplies.

• In Asia, aquaculture development linked to source of wild juveniles.

Eg: Socialist Republic of Vietnam -> identify designated areas for
aquaculture because of low value for alternative uses or for political
reasons linked to broader agendas of decision maker.
Suppose

1. access to market

2. develop at rural area --> urbanisation too rapidly, now become very
close to urban market.

3. purposeful zoning, create certain area for aquaculture, industry

development research-centric development area. (University
science parks-->research are extended to nearby communities)
• Eg: NELHA in Hawaii, the home of High Health SPF shrimp. a location
supports premium end of the value chain

• Eg: Federative Republic of Brazil implement aquaculture parks

around eight reservoirs of the Paranapenema river. isolate and
control environmental impacts from aquaculture.

• Eg: Federal Republic of Nigeria--> local young entrepreneurs are

provided access to water , electricity, drainage, market access to
develop pond/tank culture production of African catfish.
1. Ecosystem approach to aquaculture: participatory approaches (include
community stakeholder, governmental and developmental NGOs to know the
gap)

2. different culture, governance, institutional issue. (Promoting cage culture

among specific marginalised group- women)

3. Indicators within the broader producer community should be monitored

overtime --> how many household gain benefit from aquaculture, median
incomes of household doing aquaculture, increasing trend in labour
rate/wages
Malaysia

• Fishery 801,000 tonnes (1985) - 1,241,000 tonnes (1995)

• Aquaculture 55,000 tonnes (1985) - 132,700 tonnes (1995)

• Number of fishers 102,900 (1985) - 82,000 (1995). Sustainable

fishing.
• Aquaculture contribute 0.2% to GDP

• Succeeded producing high value species for domestic and export

• successful in poverty alleviation programme. improve household

income.

• Eg: bivalve molluscs culture, seaweed culture in Sabah, inland

farming of tilapia in earthen ponds, floating cage in lakes and
reservoirs.
Politics and legislation
• Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-Based Industry > Department of
Fisheries Malaysia stipulated under Fisheries Act 1985 > developing
and managing the aquaculture sector.

• Malaysian Fisheries Development Authority > increase the livelihood of

the fishemen through aquauclture activities as well as regulating the
marketing of fishery and aquaculture produce, regulating international
trade by issuing import and export licenses.
Fisheries Act 1985

1. Fisheries plans 7. Marine park & Marine

Reserves
2. Licensing
8. Enforcement
3. Foreign fishing vessels

4. Offences 9. General provisions

5. Turtle & Inland fisheries 10. Fisheries

6. Aquaculture
5. Turtle and Inland Fisheries

• To promote and regulate aquaculture in riverine waters and provide

leasing and licensing of lakes, swamps, mining pools and other pools
and land and other areas for the cultivation of fish, prescribe
standards for the construction and operation of aquaculture
establishments, measures for the prevention of fish diseases and
controls over particular species of fish which may be produced by
cultivation
• To provide for the licensing of fishing vessels and fishing appliances
operating or in use in riverine waters

• To regulate and prohibit any method of fishing in riverine waters or

the use or possession of certain types of traps or nets, and to
prescribe minimum mesh sizes for fishing nets

• To regulate or prohibit the erection, maintenance, marking and

operation of fishing stakes in riverine waters
• To prescribe the minimum weights and sizes of fish which may be
caught in riverine waters for the purpose of sale, processing,
consumption or sports, or to prohibit fishing for any prescribed
species of fish

• To prescribe close seasons for fishing in any designated area, fishing

for certain species of fish or fishing using certain methods in riverine
waters
• to designate persons by name or office to be licensing officers under
this Part and to prescribe the powers to be exercised by such officers
and by fisheries officers or inland fisheries officers, as the case may be,
with respect to turtles and inland fisheries;

• to prescribe condition and procedures for application for any permit,

license, certificate or other document required under rules made
under this Part relating to turtles and inland fisheries the form thereof
and the amount of fees and deposits payable therefor
• for the purpose of the conservation of fish in riverine waters, to
regulate and control the construction of any slides, dams or other
obstruction, or the removal of sand or gravel or other alteration to
the natural environment or habitat of fish

• to designate, prescribe, promote, provide or regulate any other

matter for the proper conservation, development, management and
regulation of turtles and inland fisheries.
6. Aquaculture
Control of live fish 40. Any person who—
(a) imports into or exports out of Malaysia;
(b) transports from Peninsular Malaysia into the Federal Territory of Labuan or the State of Sabah or
Sarawak;
(c) transports from the Federal Territory of Labuan or the State of Sabah or Sarawak into Peninsular
Malaysia;
(d) transports from the Federal Territory of Labuan into the State of Sabah or Sarawak;
(e) transports from the State of Sabah into the Federal Territory of Labuan or the State of Sarawak; or
(f) transports from the State of Sarawak into the Federal Territory of Labuan or the State of Sabah
live fish without a permit or in breach of any condition in a permit issued by the Director General under this
section shall be guilty of an offence
• The Director General may impose such conditions as he thinks fit in the permit,
including conditions concerning the state of cleanliness of the fish to be exported,
imported or transported and measures to avoid the spread of communicable fish
diseases, or to avoid or control the release into the natural environment of
nonindigenous species of fish

• Notwithstanding subsections (1) and (2), the permit to import or to export any live fish
shall be issued by the Director General of Quarantine and Inspection in accordance
with the Malaysian Quarantine and Inspection Services Act 2011 [Act 728]
• Any person who imports or exports any live fish without a permit issued by the Director
General of Quarantine and Inspection commits an offence under the Malaysian Quarantine and
Inspection Services Act 2011

• An application for a permit to import and export any live fish shall be made in accordance with
the Malaysian Quarantine and Inspection Services Act 2011

• The enforcement in relation to live fish at the entry points, quarantine stations and quarantine
premises shall be carried out by an enforcement officer appointed under the Malaysian
Quarantine and Inspection Services Act 2011 in accordance with the powers under that Act.

• For the purposes of this section, ―entry point, ―quarantine station and ―quarantine premises
shall have the same meanings as assigned to these expressions in the Malaysian Quarantine
and Inspection Services Act 2011.