Agrico Qatar has plans to increase its fresh shrimp production to 800 metric tons (MT) annually, boosting Qatar’s nascent aquaculture industry.
The private agricultural development company's managing director, Nasser Ahmed al-Khalaf, told the Gulf Times at the eighth International Agricultural Exhibition (AgriteQ) and International Environmental Exhibition (EnviroteQ) at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre that his company will also scale up tilapia production to 450 MT to support Qatar’s food security goals.
Agrico is planning on producing 350 MT of vannamei this year at the company’s 10,000-square-meter farm, which has already begun operations.
Qatar’s per capita annual fish consumption is about 22.3 kilograms, with fresh shrimp consumption estimated at 1,000 MT annually. Agrico’s projected production for 2021 will meet at least one-third of the existing national demand for fresh shrimp, the company said.
Although aquaculture is not a primary agricultural activity in Qatar, results from ongoing research from selected small freshwater facilities have demonstrated there is huge potential for domestically produced seafood, according to al-Khalaf. He said tilapia has an especially bright outlook, and pushed for the country to successfully implement the new aquaculture executive regulation, which provides guidelines for sustainable development and management of aquaculture, “using best management practices and adopting measures for mitigating environmental impacts by judicious utilization of land and water resources.”
Currently, most of Qatar's aquaculture production from small-scale freshwater facilities is consumed locally, “although some fish is exported to neighbouring countries, particularly Saudi Arabia,” Business Wire reported. Qatar’s market for Fisheries and Aquaculture is likely to post a compound annual growth rate of 5.1 percent for between 2020 and 2025, the report found.
According to Agrico, the planned aquaculture expansion program will be combined with a venture into aquaponics to boost food production from an integrated fish-farming system, with vegetable production utilizing fertilizer from the farmed fish.
Already, Agrico has commenced levee production that al-Khalaf said is “not using any mechanical system.”
He said, with aquaponics, the cost of fertilizer derived from the farmed fish costs just 3 percent of the price being paid in Qatar for conventional fertilizer.
