Ecuador could produce 700,000 metric tons of shrimp in the next few years and overhaul India as the world’s largest producer, said John Sackton, publisher of Seafood News, during the International Congress on Global Fishery Production in Vigo, Spain, on Monday. Last week, at the Global Aquaculture Alliance for the Global Outlook on Aquaculture Leadership (GOAL) conference, held in Guayaquil, Ecuador, the forecast was that Vietnam could overtake India. However, Sackton’s money is on Ecuador, where the use of auto-feeders and an increase in density, still at low levels, means production is booming. Both GOAL and Sackton’s forecast — using slides from Charoen Pokphand Foods’ Robins McIntosh’s presentation at the recent Aquaculture Roundtable Series, or TARS, conference, which Undercurrent News has previously covered — have Ecuador around 500,000t in 2018. Ecuador is on a tremendous upward cycle, said Sackton. There is a lot of room to up the density and maintain a low density of production, he said. The use of auto-feeders means companies can control the amount going into the ponds, giving an optimum level, said Sackton. He also said auto-feeders are being used more in Asia, as is central drainage of a shrimp pond, which was developed to deal with early mortality syndrome (EMS). The technology developed to deal with EMS, a disease that decimated production at the time, is driving the growth, he said. This is especially true in Thailand, where production has become far more efficient after EMS, he said. Before EMS, when Thailand produced over 600,000t, it had 45,000 hectares of farms and produced 14t/ha per year. Now, although the farming area has dropped to 10,000ha, production is 34t/ha per year. EMS forced a major change in shrimp aquaculture focused around cleaner ponds, cleaner broodstock and cleaner water, to use McIntosh’s terminology, he said. In fact, one of the major risks for farmed shrimp production in 2019 is not disease, but low prices, driven by the increased supply, he said. This would then cause lower supply, likely to result in increased prices and supply, however, he said. Also, a second major risk is India’s shrimp production dropping more than expected in 2018. Sackton used a slide from McIntosh’s presentation (see more on Undercurrent on this here) showing India could go under 600,000t in 2018. GOAL also forecasted a similar drop for India in 2018. Increasing the amount of ponds, not efficiency and better technology, has driven India’s production surge. The issue for India is, as ponds age, productivity goes down, as more diseases occur, he said. There is no production collapse, but the Indian growth story not as robust as we expected, said Sackton. Then, for Ecuador, a risk is China’s production recovering, seeing as the Latin American country is so dependent on selling to the market, said Sackton. The Chinese market is very important for Ecuador, based on the fact its own farmers can’t supply the country’s needs, he said. McIntosh’s data, used by Sackton, has Chinese production dropping in 2018 to 520,000t, from 567,000t the year before and 789,000t back in 2015. This data is well below what GOAL forecasts for China, however. According to GOAL, China is still producing over 1m metric tons of shrimp. According to GOAL, China is predicted to reach 1.3m metric tons by 2020, still far below the 2012 level of nearly 1.6m metric tons that the country produced before the EMS crisis. Sackton alluded to the different forecasts for China, stating McIntosh’s numbers are based on feed sales. Overall, he said it looks likely the forecast made at the 2018 Global Seafood Market Conference (GSMC), held at the start of every year in the US, of a 6% increase in production this year will likely be about right. However, the GSMC forecast was more bullish on India than has played out in 2018 production, but other countries, such as Ecuador, Vietnam and Indonesia, have offset this. Downplays risk of SHIV During McIntosh’s presentation at TARS, he mentioned the possible impact of shrimp hemocyte iridescent virus (SHIV) on production. SHIV has been detected in China and Thailand at low levels, George Chamberlain, the president of the Global Aquaculture Alliance told Undercurrent in a Oct. 1 phone interview, adding that there is concern that it may be found elsewhere in Southeast Asia. SHIV is detectable in broodstock, so it should not cause such an issue for shrimp production as EMS, said Sackton. As SHIV can be picked up at this stage, shrimp with SHIV should not get put in ponds as easily, he said. The farming industry has also adopted better biosecurity since the EMS crisis, said Sackton. EMS forced a major change in shrimp aquaculture, he said. There is also no sign of SHIV in India, where farmers are facing conventional diseases, said Sackton.