Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Shrimp farming
Summary
Shrimp farming is an aquaculture business that exists in either a marine or freshwater environment, producing shrimp or prawns (crustaceans of the groups Caridea or Dendrobranchiata) for human consumption.
Marine shrimp farming
Commercial marine shrimp farming began in the 1970s, and production grew steeply, particularly to match the market demands of the United States, Japan, and Western Europe. The total global production of farmed shrimp reached more than 2.1 million tonnes in 1991, representing a value of nearly US$9 billion. About 30% of farmed shrimp is produced in Asia, particularly in China and Indonesia. The other 54.1% is produced mainly in Latin America, where Brazil, Ecuador, and Mexico are the largest producers. The largest exporting nation is Indonesia.
Shrimp farming has changed from traditional, small-scale businesses in Southeast Asia into a global industry. Technological advances have led to growing shrimp at ever higher densities, and broodstock is shipped worldwide. Virtually all farmed shrimp are of the family Penaeidae, and just two species – Litopenaeus vannamei (Pacific white shrimp) 70% and Penaeus monodon (giant tiger prawn) 20% – account for roughly 90% of all farmed shrimp.
These industrial monocultures used to be very susceptible to diseases, which caused several regional wipe-outs of farm shrimp populations in past decades. Increasing ecological problems, repeated disease outbreaks, and pressure and criticism from NGOs, consumer countries and even producers themselves, led to changes in the industry in the late 1990s and generally stronger regulation by governments.
In 1999, a program aimed at developing and promoting more sustainable farming practices was initiated, including governmental bodies, industry representatives, and environmental organizations.
Freshwater prawn farming
Freshwater prawn farming shares many characteristics with, and many of the same problems as, marine shrimp farming. Unique problems are introduced by the developmental lifecycle of the main species (the giant river prawn, Macrobrachium rosenbergii).
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.