Russia’s Federal Agency for Fisheries will lease 143 sites for aquaculture in 2021, the most acreage ever explicitly offered for aquaculture in Russia’s modern history.
The agency will lease more than 22,000 hectares for aquacultural use, mostly to be leased by the end of summer, with 65 sites totaling 17,800 hectares located in the Ural region; 59 sites covering 3,200 hectares in the Russian South, and 11 sites over 398 hectares in Russia’s northern regions.
Russia’s nascent aquaculture industry has been on the rise over the last decade, following a move by the government to begin actively leasing land specifically dedicated to the sector. Over the past 10 years, aquaculture production volumes have shot up more than twofold to reach 328,600 metric tons (MT) in 2020, a figure that was up 14 percent from 2019. Total annual production is projected to reach 620,000 MT by 2030, according to the agency.
With increased government interest in the sector, prices for prime aquaculture acreage have also increased. In mid-July, the Federal Agency for Fisheries auctioned a 25-year lease of a 1,050-hectare mariculture spot in the Primorye region in Russian Far East for RUB 153 million (USD 2.1 million, EUR 1.8 million), a record price. Other regions are more affordable – in early February, four spots of a common square of 1,156 hectares were sold in the Chelyabinsk region, in the Ural Mountains, for RUB 2.5 million (USD 33,900, EUR 28,800).
Over the last 10 years, the government leased 5,580 aquaculture spots totaling 660,000 hectares – 220,000 hectares in the Urals, 90,800 hectares in the Far East, 56,800 hectares in the South, 49,000 hectares in Siberia, and 30,500 hectares in the Northwest.
Also new this year, the government has begun imposing tighter controls over the lessees. Earlier this year, the fishery agency began on-site spot checks to ensure lease contracts requirements are being fulfilled.
Photo courtesy of Parilov/Shutterstock
