18% increase in global shrimp production by 2020
Global shrimp production will increase by 18% in the next couple of years, according to Dr James Anderson, director of the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems & Food and Resource Economics at the University of Florida.
Every major supplier will contribute to this but there are new countries as well that will lead the charge, explained the professor during a scientific presentation in Ecuador, according to The Fish Site magazine.
Aquaculture will be dominant
Ecuador, Honduras, Panama and Saudi Arabia will be playing an important role in this development, says Anderson, even if price volatility and high production costs are still hinder the expansion of the sector.
The increase is to be based on aquaculture as the landing volumes for wild-caught shrimp have either remained stagnant or declined over the last 30 years. „Aquaculture shrimp could represent about 60% of global supply”, predicted Anderson.
The major producing regions for shrimp aquaculture - Southeast Asia, China, India, the Americas, and the Middle East/North Africa - all predict some level of increase in production through 2020 compared to their current production numbers. Southeast Asia, India, the Americas, and the Middle East/North Africa are all expecting an increase in production ranging from 6.0 – 19.4% by 2020 compared to 2015. When broken down even further, the countries with the highest growth expectations by 2020 are Ecuador, Honduras, Panama and Saudi Arabia.
Markets and preferences
The US is accelerating its shrimp imports at this time and the trend is to stay like that for another couple of years. The North American country has increased its shrimp imports by almost 40% from 2013 to 2018, specifically from India and Indonesia (together accounting for 56% of imports in 2018), while imports from Thailand have decreased by a drastic 73% from 2010 to 2018, said the data presented by Anderson.
At the same time, Europe is also manifesting a tendency to increase its shrimp imports, but not at the pace the US market does it.
Interestingly, in the US, the demand is largely for bigger shrimp, while most of the world is still producing relatively small shrimp. The trend towards smaller shrimp production around the world could be due, in part, to efforts to harvest shrimp at earlier stages to prevent or reduce the risk of disease.
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