Andhra Pradesh shrimp farmers caught in a net

The writing on the wall is clear for 80,000 shrimp farmers of the nine coastal districts in Andhra Pradesh "" go organic or go bust.

The Rs 3,500 crore foreign exchange-earning prawn and scampi industry was jolted as about 20 containers of shrimp worth Rs 30-50 crore were recently rejected by Europe, Australia and Japan owing to excess presence of antibiotics in prawns.

The Japanese also rejected prawns shipped from West Godavari owing to muddy mould smell caused by geosmin present in bluegreen algae found in ponds.

Experts point out that Europe has imposed more rigid quality standards on shrimp and other marine products, than on farm produce. The US has also made it compulsory that shrimp consignments be labelled as 'organic' (60 per cent our exports go to that country). They say the farmers are now forced to take to organic rearing of shrimp culture. If they respond immediately, they can as well increase exports by another Rs 3,500 crore.

Experts cite the example of organic salmon, whose sales in Europe had shot up by over 40-fold between 1997 and now.

According to them, only organic farming and a campaign to increase domestic consumption of shrimp could extricate farmers from the present crisis. This year (2005-06), farmers have stocked 40 million shrimp seed as compared to last year's 18 million seed.

The farmers, however, are facing two major problems in taking up organic shrimp farming. First, they cannot give up the use of antibiotics immediately or sooner. Experts, scientists or the Exporters and the Marine Products Exports Development Authority (MPEDA) officials cannot right away suggest organic feeds or alternative antidotes for infections and diseases, which plague tiger prawn and scampi crops.

About 20 antibiotics and some chemicals, which were banned, are still available in the market aplenty and which farmers continue to use.

Secondly, the available feed, consisting of fishmeal, fish oil, cereal-based products, egg flakes, honey, plantains, vitamins and minerals, is not produced through organic methods. The low-cost organic feed 'Mahima' developed by the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) is only frugal, they feel.

The MPEDA, under a new farm development scheme gives a subsidy of Rs 40,000-60,000 per hectare for raising scampi and Rs 1.5 lakh per five hectare for rearing tiger prawn, Rs 6 lakh maximum for a hatchery, Rs 1.50 lakh for a drain filtering equipment and 25 per cent of the cost to purchase water testing equipment if farmers form into groups.

However, farmers rue that not all the subsidies reach them. Andhra farmers harvested a record over one-lakh tonnes of shrimp in 2004-05. Sixty per cent of India's shrimp production comes from Andhra Pradesh and 80 per cent scampi production from Nellore district.

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Mixed reactions

• The Rs 3,500 crore foreign exchange-earning prawn and scampi industry was jolted as about 20 containers of shrimp worth Rs 30-50 crore were recently rejected by Europe, Australia and Japan
• These nations alleged that there was excess presence of antibiotics in prawns
• The normal Examples fare between Delhi and Bombay and vice versa starts from as a low as Rs 1,699
• In the initial phase of operations, with three aircraft, SpiceJet is expected to cover cities