Philippines Agriculture Secretary, Proceso J. Alcala, has urged aquaculture companies to export more processed fish products and called on livestock and poultry breeders to venture overseas.
Alcala made the pitch in several trips to Mindanao, particularly in General Santos City, where the country’s tuna ?eets are based, and in Sarangani, where the country’s biggest milk?sh fry producer, Fin?sh Hatcheries Inc. (FHI), is located.
Alsons Aquaculture Corp. (AAC) has already heeded the call, breaking into the China market in January 2012 with an initial nine-ton shipment of frozen milk?sh (bangus) for distribution in retail outlets in Xiamen.
Gabriel H. Alcantara, assistant vice president of the processed food division, said AAC would be the ?rst company to test the potential of bangus exports in China.
Being the first to set up a commercial hatchery and having been in the business for longer than 20 years, Fin?sh Hatcheries Inc. and AAC, both owned by the Alcantara Group of Companies, operate the only fully integrated ?sh culture operations in the Philippines.
AAC has been into the lucrative export market in the US, home to more than three million Filipinos, and is seeking to target the European Union (EU) as well.
Eighty percent of the company’s annual gross revenues come from its US exports.
By breaking into the huge China market, AAC hopes to further entrench the position of the company as the country’s largest exporter of processed and packaged milk?sh, Alcantara added.
The milk?sh were hatched and raised in Alsons’ own aquaculture farm in Alabel, Sarangani and processed on-site at AAC’s state-of-the-art facility, he said.
Alcala noted that as 75 percent of the world’s major marine ?sh stocks are depleted, overexploited, or caught to the brink of extinction, the logical option is to go inland, or establish ?sh farms in mangrove areas or brackish waters.
The Agriculture chief is correct in maintaining this position and the policy has been implemented not only by the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), which is seeking to establish hundreds of hatcheries nationwide to propagate fin fish species while employing community labor to resuscitate the dying mangroves, which have been reduced by more than 70 percent as of last count.
However, the Earth Web Site, which monitors the world’s marine stocks and land resources, warned that for aquaculture to be sustained, it must do away with aquaculture methods that unwittingly degrade the environment.
This year, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) estimates that 50 percent of the world’s food fish will come from aquaculture. FAO also reported that Asia will be the hub of aquaculture since 89 percent of all ventures are located in the region.
In issuing an alert on the possible dangers posed by less systematic and environmentally unsound aquaculture, Earth Web Site said, for some of the 210 farmed aquatic and plant species, eight, particularly salmon and shrimp, the methods currently used require high energy inputs and can cause environmental degradation similar to industrial/chemical agriculture or factory farming of livestock.
It listed the loss of natural habitat, loss of genetic diversity, and replacement of self-reliant indigenous fisheries with multinational corporations as key concerns.
2012 Tempo