Global Seafood Alliance (GSA), The Center for Responsible Seafood (TCRS) and Choice Canning Co have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) designed to uplift small-scale aquaculture farmers in India by offering more education and training opportunities on responsible aquaculture practices.
Dubbed the “Responsible Farming Practices”, the two-year initiative is meant to bring more economic stability to farming communities challenged by a lack of infrastructure, capital, insurance, financial planning, market exposure and access to information on responsible aquaculture practices.
Approximately 90% of the world’s aquaculture farms are small-scale or family-owned. Initially, the initiative will focus on India and will be modelled in a way that can be applied beyond India.
The initiative consists of four phases. The first phase is assessment and includes identifying infrastructure needs, analysing and prioritising challenges and identifying trainers and farmer participants. Its second phase is the implementation of an education and training programme using GSA’s Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) certification standards as a framework. The third phase is outreach and includes growing the training programme through increased participation and building marketplace support for the initiative. A fourth and final stage is graduating the farmer participants from the initiative.
Its education and training programme will include content on water-quality monitoring, biosecurity, disease management, feed management and data management, delivered through using a train-the-trainers approach with classroom-style workshops and visits to farms participating in the programme.
The programme will be certificate-based so farmer participants can be recognised for their work, as the key to long-term success is support from the markets purchasing the farmers’ products, which will lead to more consistency and economic stability year-to-year.
According to GSA, it’s the hope of this partnership that using a certificate-based approach will lead to more standardised practices enticing insurers and creditors to provide practical rates for the aquaculture farming sector in India and beyond.
“As an industry, we need to do a better job of helping farmers improve their lifestyles, educating them and providing them some type of protection through insurance,” Choice Canning Co President Jose Thomas said. “The objective here is the farmer. Without him or her, there is no shrimp on the shelf. It’s time that we help them more.”
“Farmers and fishers are the people who bring seafood to our tables, so I am thrilled to start this partnership with Choice Canning and TCRS in order to provide support and training to the farmers who want to use responsible practices,” GSA CEO Wally Stevens said. “Ultimately, it is this type of work that brings assurances to the marketplace and consumers who want to enjoy seafood.”
“TCRS is committed to bringing improvements to the global farming and fisher communities, the vast majority of which are very small businesses,” TCRS President George Chamberlain. “By using the knowledge and experience of experts we will be able to deliver training that will help drive improvements in shrimp farming practices which will help these small businesses maintain their viability.”
