India built an enormous shrimp exporting industry when it started vannamei shrimp farming a decade ago. The country could be set to emulate that success with pangasius and tilapia. Bihar, the poorest state of India, has some of the best conditions on earth for aquaculture. The Ganges River, which extends for 1,569 miles (2,525 kilometers) from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal, splits the state in two and creates the so-called Gangetic plains with ideal conditions for pangasius aquaculture. Several other states across northern India are highly prospective for pangasius farming. Bihar’s output could rise tenfold in the next two years as farmers switch to this new species from native forms of carp and other types of catfish, according to Rishikesh Kashyap, who heads Cooperative Fisheries Federation (COFFED), a Bihari fishing association. Farmers like pangasius because it can be grown in a shorter period of time and has better survival rates than carp, he said. This is the highest income generating aquaculture so it’s only going to attract more interest, Kashyap told Undercurrent News. This is the cheapest source of protein and it will reduce the hunger problem in the world. Pangasius can grow to 800g in weight after only 140 days from fingerling size and withstands pond-borne diseases better than other fish, Kashyap said. Carp, a popular Indian fish, takes more than two years to grow to a similar harvest weight when grown with traditional farming methods. It’s a no brainer for most farmers, said aquaculture consultant Paramveer Singh. Pangasius culture only recently became part of India’s aquaculture industry. Andhra Pradesh, the top producer state in India, started farming in the past decade as wealthy consumers grew an appetite for the fish after tasting imported Vietnamese product. Andhra produced about 80% of India’s pangasius output in 2017. This share fell to about 60% in 2018 as Andhra farmers grew more shrimp, and as farming of pangasius started to grow in northern states including Bihar, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. One constraint is to further growth is the lack of large, professional players in the fingerlings business, Kashyap said. Pangasius compares favorably with other protein prices in India. Farm prices for whole live pangasius increased to INR 74 per kilogram in 2018, compared with INR 61/kg in 2017, according to industry sources. This year, the whole fish prices increased further, enhancing the attractiveness of pangasius versus carp farming. Carp trades at INR 100, but the fish takes eight months to grow when fed with commercial fish feed, instead of five for pangasius, Singh said. Carp also has inferior survival rate at 70%-80%, versus 90%-95% for pangasius, he said. That said, carp is easier to sell in the Indian market, Singh said. Pangasius farming costs range between INR 45 to 55 rupees, said Singh, who has plans to start a pangasius hatchery in Uttar Pradesh. The cost is mostly dependent on the cost of commercial feed, which ranged from INR 29 to INR 31/kg for 24-28% protein content, according to industry sources. A lot depends on the quality of feed pellets to achieve faster growth, Singh said. Using premium feed tends to allow farmers to harvest fish quicker, allowing some to obtain two harvests a year. India could eventually export pangasius The surging output might incentivize Indian producers to build an export business. Vietnam, which accounts for more than 90% of exports, sold about $2 billion of pangasius fish in 2018, according to the United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization. Indonesia and India barely compete in export markets, selling most of their fish domestically. Vietnam produced 1.27m metric tons of pangasius in 2018, compared with 590,000t from India, 524,000t from Bangladesh and 485,000t from Indonesia, according to experts surveyed for the annual Global Outlook for Aquaculture Leadership (GOAL) conference. The GOAL experts predict India’s output will increase by 8% to 630,000t by 2020, while Indonesia will rise to 16% to 562,000t over the same timeframe. By contrast, Vietnam’s output is expected to rise just 3% over that period to 1.31m metric tons. Much of the fish is sold into domestic wet channels, according to Manoj Sharma, a shrimp industry expert. This contrasts sharply with India’s highly developed, export-focused shrimp industry. Some larger players in Andhra Pradesh have built vertically integrated operations and started to sell fillets in India. India’s pangasius output is largely determined by the mood of the shrimp farming industry in eastern Andhra Pradesh state, according to Sharma. When the shrimp market improves, inland farmers switch farming sites to shrimp and create an opportunity for other states to supply the market. Pangasius demand and supply largely depends on the mood of Andhra farmers, Sharma told Undercurrent. When Andhra produces more, nobody can compete with them. Potential future oversupply, combined with growing competence among farmers, will likely spur efforts for leading farming companies and other investors to build processing plants to export fillets, according to Rishikesh Kashyap. COFFED has received delegations of potential investors from China and Thailand in Patna to discuss a potential export industry. In theory, there is plenty of demand back home. Bihar is India’s third most populous state with 99m people and some 800,000t of fish are consumed in the state, Rishikesh said. About 700,000t of that is produced in the state, of which 100,000t is farmed pangasius. Bihar typically imports about 100,000t of fish each year from Andhra Pradesh. Pangasius consumption may be restricted by the size of the whole fish, which are typically too large for a small Indian family to eat without a refrigerator to preserve unused portions, said Rahul Kulkarni, a director of West Coast, one of India’s leading seafood companies. It’s partly for this reason that West Coast switched its focus to tilapia farming instead of pangasius, despite having been involved in the start of the pangasius industry in India.
2019 Undercurrent News.