The pond culture of marine finfish : an analysis of prospects for development

Abstract

As aquaculture production plays an increasingly important role in global supplies of seafood, greater interest in this resource use will be stimulated in New Zealand. Economic viability is the leading principle on which aquaculture will be founded if contemporary government policy is based on increasingly greater utilization of market forces to determine the allocation of resources such as research funding.

To achieve normal profit, an aquaculture enterprise such as fish farming in ponds must be able to control, where possible, uncertainties with respect to production, costs and prices. The level of technical knowledge about successful pond rearing of finfish is relatively high and a prospective farmer is able to exert a corresponding level of control over physical and biological aspects of production. However, there are influences on profitability over which a fish farmer has only limited control. The market price and level of demand for fish, and the institutional framework around, and within, which a farm must operate, are recognized as highly uncertain variables not easily susceptible to individual control.

The construction of a hypothetical pond rearing operation on-growing grey mullet illustrates the likely level of shortfall between revenues and costs in finfish farming. A model is developed that highlights the relationship between marketable yield, prices and breakeven costs, and shows the magnitude of change needed for normal profit to be realized.

Three solutions are offered which would help both prospective and established fish farmers, and those involved in other forms of aquaculture, to exert a greater level of control by assisting in the resolution of production, price and institutional uncertainties.

Increased knowledge, through new and re-processed research and more efficient utilization of existing data, coupled with the formalization of a politically effective, economically integrated aquaculture industry are important to enhancing profitability and the future development of aquaculture.