India’s shrimp production is likely to achieve an all-time high of 900,000 metric tons (MT) in this financial year, up 11.9 percent year-on-year, the Economic Times reported 4 February.
This would be contrary to earlier forecasts of a drop of between 10 and 20 percent in the output due to low prices and risks of disease seen in the first half of the financial year, according to Society of Aquaculture Professionals President Ravi Kumar Yellanki.
Despite being affected by diseases such as EHP, white feces, and WSSV, there was an uptick in productivity thanks to lower densities and higher prices. Yellanki added that lower salinity in the top three shrimp producing states has led to better crops, while more salinity in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu hit production.
“Farmers are going for more crops, which has helped improve survival rates of shrimps. Farm-gate prices have also improved, as processing capacities have gone up,’’ Yellanki said at SAP’s biennial conference, Aqua India 2020, which took place in Kochi at the end of January.
Exports picked up after July and India shipped large volumes in the last few months, according to Yellanki.
The country’s shrimp exports are expected to rise 9 percent year-on-year to 668,710 MT in the 2019-2020.
China has become the second-largest buyer of shrimp from India, taking a 25 percent share of India’s total exports. That’s still lower than the 42 percent share the United States took in 2019.
Since 2018, China has emerged as a “rising star” in the global shrimp market and this has continued in 2019, Globefish said in a report released in early December last year. Shrimp exports to China between April and November 2019 were 120,535 MT, jumping nearly four times from 30,361 MT during April-November 2018 and accounting for 25.1 percent of the total.
In the 2018-2019, the country produced 804,000 MT of shrimp, an increase of 7.2 percent year-on-year.
Around 70 percent of India's shrimp is produced in the southeast state of Andhra Pradesh, followed by West Bengal (10 percent), Odisha (9 percent), Gujarat (5.5 percent) and Tamil Nadu (2.7 percent).
Photo by Chris Chase/SeafoodSource
