Freshwater Shrimp Farming Shrimp Farming and Aquaculture Research

Understanding The Basics of Marketing Farmed Shrimp

March 22, 2013 6:37 pm ⋅ 1 Comment ⋅

Until the year 1970, shrimps on the grocery market came from the ocean. They call it as shrimp boating. Until now, it is still popular but it has decreased significantly because shrimp farming flooded the market because of cheaper products.

As of now, the large portions of shrimps in the market place are coming from shrimp farms all over the world. The reason behind this is that shrimps from farms are available throughout the year and the prices per round are lower compared with shrimps from the ocean. Marketing shrimps starts with hatcheries. Shrimps will be hatched from hatcheries and they will be given time to develop until they are old enough to be marketed.

Shrimps that are old enough will be transferred to man-made ponds. They will be fed and taken care in made-made ponds until they are large enough for harvesting. They can be kept at different stages of life in different areas so farm owners can make more than one harvest every year. The price of running a shrimp boat operation is greater than making a shrimp farm. Because of this, farm owners do not charge to high for the products. However, when it comes to taste, the taste and quality of shrimps harvested from the ocean are higher than shrimps from shrimp farming.

When the shrimp are harvested from the farms, they will be sent to processing plants. In there, they will be cleaned, sorted, and packaged. If the harvest will be sent to far places, the products will undergo a flash freezing process. If the destination is not too far, they will only be packaged and sent out without going through a flash freezing process.

After the processing and repacking, they will be placed inside the refrigerated trucks and sent to seafood wholesalers. These sellers will be the contact point of grocery stores where they can buy their stocks in wholesale prices.

Southern Hemisphere is the largest source of shrimps for North America. Some of the countries here are China, India, Thailand and Vietnam. In 2004, almost 1 billion pounds of shrimp are imported to the United States. All of these came from the four countries in the Southern Hemisphere. The demand for shrimps continues to increase because a lot of consumers are looking for cheaper prices of seafood. Imported shrimp are cheaper than domestic shrimp but there are certain health issues on the imported shrimps especially the shrimps from China.

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Different Types of Shrimp Farming Operations

December 2, 2012 6:29 pm ⋅ 1 Comment ⋅

The Shrimp farming industry is growing over the years especially the type of it that involves raising shrimp under controlled conditions instead of harvesting them from the open ocean. There are two different types of shrimp farms namely; a standard shrimp farm project using a one-phase and two-phase approach.  In the two-phase type of farming, juvenile shrimp is stocked in nursery ponds from hatcheries and after several weeks, they are transferred to grow out ponds. And as regards one-phase, there is the elimination of the nursery ponds and the shrimp are directly stocked into grow out ponds and this happens after they have spent short periods in adaptation tanks.  Two crops of shrimp are produced by farms a year but some farms can harvest three crops a year especially those located within 10 degrees of the equator.

The different types of shrimp farms have the potential of producing abundant shrimp as long as you maintain the standard requirements of the farm. And it is this success of shrimp farming that is now presenting a threat to marine environments.  For instance, the Mesoamerican Reef in Belize has been damaged by shrimp farms. But projects have been launched by concerned people in response that are designed to observe as well as control shrimp farming.  This has in turn encouraged more sustainable practices.

Another response has been to practice indoor fish farming where shrimp farming projects are built so that they are able to be friendly environmentally as well as sustainable. The ponds are each stocked with shrimp and each pond has shrimp at specific stages of development.  Pollution from these facilities is very minimal as waste is reduced by water recycling. Shrimp are known to be disease resistant. Shrimp farming enables one to deliver shrimps that are fresh at the same cost.  Many people are now using the different kinds of shrimp farms hence confirming the fact that shrimp farming is growing at a very fast rate.

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