10/05/06 Aquaculture Industry Growing

Aquaculture Industry Growing. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service provides important information to the nation's producers. And when folks called on NASS for the latest data on the aquaculture industry - according to Chief of the NASS Livestock Branch Dan Kerestes - the first Census of Aquaculture was released. KERESTES: The producers and data users across the United States had an intense desire to find out what was going on with aquaculture, and at that time the NASS who had just recently taken over the census said okay we're going to do a census of aquaculture. That was in 1998. And on Monday morning - NASS released its second aquaculture census. Kerestes says the latest report shows that the U.S. aquaculture industry is growing. KERESTES: The aquaculture industry as a whole has grown 11.7% over the past 7 years and it's become a bigger money thing for the industry as a whole. U.S. sales of aquaculture products grew from 978 million dollars in 1998 to over 1 billion dollars in 2005. Kerestes says 62-percent of those sales come from food fish - like catfish, perch, salmon, tilapia and trout. Mollusks - including clams and oysters - according to Kerestes - accounted for 19-percent of 2005 sales. Crustaceans - which would include lobsters and shrimp - make up five-percent of sales. Mississippi led the nation with nearly 250-million dollars in sales in 2005. Arkansas, Alabama and Louisiana all topped the 100-million dollar mark. Louisiana - with 873 farms - is the state with the largest number of aquaculture farms. That's more than double the number in any other state. Kerestes says that's exactly the type of information producers, aquaculture organizations, government officials and others need to evaluate industry trends and determine the economic impact of aquaculture. KERESTES: Producers in general need to know what's going on so they know how to shape their business decisions, plus if they want to get a loan, bankers need to have this information. Government needs to have it to decide what they should do as far as programs for the aquaculture producers. Extensions people, universities representatives need to have it for their research needs so its information that's used by a lot of people. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.