The success story of fish farming

The meteoric growth of aquaculture, or fish farming, in India has remained largely unacclaimed. The output of fish and other aquatic foods grown in aquaculture farms has surged by a whopping 80 per cent in the past one decade. More than 28 million fish farmers now earn their livelihood directly from aquaculture, and several million more from the post-production value chain. Farmers in many non-traditional fish-producing states have dug ponds in their agricultural fields to grow fish for better returns. The youth, in particular, are opting for fish cultivation as a means of employment and income. An unprecedented boom has been witnessed in shrimp farming, with thousands of fresh- and brackish-water prawn-producing farms coming up in states like Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Gujarat. Many of these are 100 per cent export-oriented units. India has, consequently, become the leading producer of farmed fish, almost on a par with China, and one of the top exporters of captured as well as cultured shrimps.
 

Interestingly, while it took almost 66 years after Independence to achieve an annual aquaculture fish production level of around 6 million tonnes, doubling this volume has taken just about 10 years. This is borne out by the official data, which indicates aquaculture production has spurted from 6.13 million tonnes in 2013-14 to over 13.1 million tonnes in 2022-23. The pace of growth is expected to accelerate in the coming years, thanks to more focused attention being paid to aquaculture under the government’s flagship fisheries development scheme called the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY). This programme, launched in 2020, aims to boost the average productivity of aquaculture farms from the present around 3 tonnes a hectare to over 5 tonnes. Besides, it also envisages doubling the export of aquaculture products and generating 5.5 million additional jobs. This apart, it also proposes to facilitate forming over 2,000 fish farmers’ producer organisations, or FFPOs, with the involvement of agencies like the Small Farmers’ Agri-business Consortium (SFAC), the National Agriculture Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (Nafed), the National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC), and the National Fisheries Development Board (NFDB).
 

Significantly, the government is also reportedly working on formulating another scheme to promote shrimp aquaculture in a big way in non-traditional fish-producing states in the north, particularly Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Punjab. Various stretches of saline land, having brackish groundwater, are mooted to be utilised for culturing brackish water prawns for domestic market and exports. Haryana has already made a beginning in this direction, with nearly 500 hectares of water bodies having been brought under shrimp farming. Some fisheries research centres, notably the Chennai-based Central Institute of Brackish-Water Aquaculture, is being roped in to promote captive rearing of various aquatic fauna, such as shrimps, oysters, mussels, crabs, lobsters, sea bass, mullets, milk fish, and cobia. With modern technology, such farms are expected to have a high yield potential of 6-7 tonnes of these products per hectare. Shrimp aquaculture is already quite popular among fish farmers in most of the Deccan region. With northern states also poised to begin contributing to it, India would be able to substantially raise its export of aquatic foods produced in both fresh and brackish water through fish farming.
 

The aquaculture revolution began taking root in India way back in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the introduction of composite fish culture in natural and man-made water bodies. This technique, which is still widely practised in fish farming, involves simultaneous stocking of several fish species which can coexist in the same water body because of their tendency to dwell at different depths of the water column, and not competing with each other for sourcing food. The most commonly used fish species in this system are the three popular Indian major carps, including Rohu, Catla, and Mrigal, and some other carps like Silver Carp and Grass Carp. Most of these fishes enjoy good market demand throughout the country.
 

Composite fish farming has, over the years, witnessed some major modifications. One of its notable new versions is vertical fish culture, which allows higher stocking and multiple harvesting to maximise production and profitability. Some progressive entrepreneurs are now deploying ultra-modern technologies, such as Internet of Things-based devices, to continuously monitor water quality, especially the level of aeration, and feed availability, for optimal growth of fish. It enables them to ramp up productivity to as high as 7-10 tonnes per hectare. Many farmers are also integrating fisheries with crop farming and agriculture’s allied activities like dairy, poultry, piggery, and duck rearing, to gainfully utilise the wastes and by-products of one venture as the input, or manure, for the other. The practice of stocking suitable species of fish in paddy fields — paddy-cum-fish culture — is also gaining popularity. Such innovative trends need to be incentivised to increase fishermen’s and farmers’ income.

surinder.sud@gmail.com