July 20, 2020

Experts consider challenges Singapore's aquaculture faces during webinar

Singapore's "30-by-30" food self-sufficiency goal will depend significantly on aquaculture to support its food system.

The goal seeks to achieve the city-state's self-sufficiency in food production from 10% to 30% by 2030 to address food security amidst climate change.

However, while Singapore has at least 90 fish farms off its coast, experts said the problem isn't with production capacity; public perception of the industry and finding a homegrown market are the challenges.

"I don't think the problem is with production. I can produce like crazy - I just need to get the fingerlings and I can grow them in whatever space we have available. But do we have output," said Wong Jing Kai, managing director at Singapore fish farm Ah Hua Kelong, in a recent webinar hosted by aquaculture accelerator Hatch.

"If each farm would have 100 tonnes of fish available at any one point in time, Singapore's population will not be able to sustain that - the locals are not there," he added. "When people say [Singapore] needs to hit 30-by-30, I'm saying that without a proper marketing and directional approach, you'll never get there."

The success of Singapore's aquaculture sector involves determining the maximum amount producers could harvest without creating a glut so that retailers cannot move products, according to Ronnie Tan, a board member at California-based biotechnology firm Calysta and former vice president at Malaysia shrimp producer Blue Archipelago.

"You don't really want a situation where your fluctuating prices are up one day down the other," he said. "Supermarkets find it very difficult to buy from you as well, because they don't like fluctuations. They want a standard price. If you can give it to them for one month, you'll be very happy. So this is the critical factor - what is the carrying capacity of the market for a particular species on a daily basis."

In June, Friend of the Sea, a Milan, Italy-based certifier of aquaculture, fishmeal, and wild-capture fisheries that recognises sustainable fishing and aquaculture practices, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Institution of Aquaculture Singapore to collaboratively move toward the development of environmentally-responsible aquaculture processes in Singapore.

The small panel also discussed challenges aquaculture companies are facing throughout Southeast Asia as a whole.

"The aquaculture industry in Southeast Asia is pretty fragmented," said Hatch Blue's managing partner and co-founder, Georg Baunach. "In the shrimp industry, you would find 80% of the farmers are these small operations, not real businesses, but individual farmers. I think this makes it tough to coordinate, for example, deciding to build a better brand to appeal to the Western market that this shrimp often is sold through."

"And it also is tough for suppliers to bring in new innovation to those remote, small farms," Baunach continued. "A lot of those farmers then individually face a lot of challenges because they don't have these economies of scale and they are reliant on the feed companies -  they determine the prices."

- SeafoodSource