Mexico's aquaculture industry is growing at more than twice the global average, according to the Mexican online publication 20 Minutos.
The publication cites Mexico's Secretary of Agriculture, José Calzada Rovirosa, as stating that Mexico's aquaculture sector has been growing at the rate of 15 percent a year, in comparison with the global norm of approximately six percent a year.
Rovirosa was speaking at the launch of the Development of Commercial Tilapia in the Adolfo López Mateos Dam project at the end of last year. He explained that in Mexico 155,000 tons of tilapia are produced annually, a figure that represents 25 percent of what is consumed nationwide, and stressed that the Mexican product is of much better quality compared to that imported from the Asian continent, the article said.
Mexico's farmed shrimp and tilapia industries generate approximately MXN 17 billion (USD 918 million, EUR 735 million), the article said. The country also currently imports about 400,000 tons of tilapia from Asia.
“So we need to produce more...to start replacing imports,” Rovirosa said.
Mario Aguilar Sánchez, head of Mexico’s National Commission of Aquaculture and Fisheries said the tilapia-rearing opportunity created by the dam was prime, due to water quality, the location, and the producers who have made the project a reality.
“[It] is the paradise of aquaculture," Aguilar Sánchez said.
The Food and Agriculture Organization's State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2016 report states that Mexico's aquaculture production was approximately 193,000 tons in 2015 and estimates that its aquaculture production will grow by around 54 percent over the 10-year period between 2015 and 2025.
