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The onset of the end: a new study warns of declining fish farming in the Legal Amazon

The study A subaquatic solution: the forgotten potential of fish farming in the Amazon, produced by Instituto Escolhas, brings an unprecedented survey on the current panorama of fish farming of native species in the nine states of the Legal Amazon. According to it, the cultivation of native fish in the Legal Amazon region has not received the deserved attention of the federal and state governments, considering its economic potential and low environmental impact.
The geospatial mapping identified 76,942 hectares of water surface in that region and 61,334 fish farming enterprises – a figure 39% above that shown in the Agricultural Census. “The absence of robust and updated data on the sector, involving more than the volume of production, was one of the great challenges of the survey and is already a sign, in itself, of the little attention received by fish farming from the government,” points out Sergio Leitão, executive director of Instituto Escolhas.
The study demonstrates that the cultivation of native fish in the Amazon region is not only economically viable but has the advantage of using up to 10 times less area to produce the same amount of meat compared to extensive cattle farming and can generate significant income – especially for small producers, who account for 95.8% of the mapped properties. For this, however, the activity needs to reach new markets to remain regionally relevant and gain competitiveness on the national scene.
“A consistent progress on the domestic market depends on resolving two bottlenecks: finding a solution for problems regarding the low productivity, such as lack of access to adequate technical assistance, and increasing the production, which has fluctuated between 160 thousand and 175 thousand tons per year since 2015. For comparison, the state of Paraná alone, the largest fish producer in the country, produced 150 thousand tons in 2022”, states Leitão.
The survey also shows that fish farming enterprises in the Legal Amazon, on average, have 19% of idle fishing areas. This percentage reaches 20% in small properties. This is because, in the current context of small production and low productivity, the investment required to keep the tanks active does not pay off. The states of the Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia and Roraima were diagnosed with presenting low productivity (2.5-4.9 tons of fish/hectare per year). This means that they could increase local production without expanding the water depth, by merely combining the reactivation of unused areas with strategies to increase productivity, such as technical assistance and the use of fish feed and fingerlings of better origin.
Access to credit, which could change this reality, emerges as another bottleneck, mainly due to the regularization requirements for the enterprise to get access to financial resources. In 2022, credit operations to fund fish farming in the Legal Amazon reached just a little over US$ 34.4 million (or 28.4% of the national total). In terms of investment, the share of the states of the Legal Amazon comprised only US$ 965 thousand or 10.5% as compared to the national total.
Adding to the lack of data, saturation of the regional market and low productivity entailed by the absence of technical assistance and adequate infrastructure, two other factors help to explain the current fish farming situation in the Legal Amazon: disinterest by state and federal governments in recognizing the potential of fish farming and investing in the sector and the outdated regulatory frameworks of some states. Combining the current trends observed in each state, the study foresees a growth from 175 thousand tons to 183 thousand tons in the next ten years, at the end of which, the sector will only have grown by 4.6%. “We have thousands of small fish farmers in the Amazon remaining active despite the lack of access to technical assistance and infrastructure and the absence of vision by local governments regarding the potential of this production chain and its importance in regional context,” finishes Leitão.
Read the executive summary here.
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