A case informal shrimp farmers association and its role in sustainable shrimp farming.

Abstract

The sustainability of shrimp aquaculture is widely debated in many international fora owing to difficulties that arose during the early expansion of the industry. One of the contributing factors to localizedfailure of shrimp farming was 'self pollution' arising out of poor or inexperienced management and lack of cooperation among the neighboring farmers. Many aquaculture experts are of the view that Small Farmers Groups (SFG) can play a very important role in managing the shrimp farms and environment. During a farm survey conducted to study the adoption of shrimp farming practices in Tamil Nadu, the authors came across a unique fanners association, at Tambikottai- vadakadu farm cluster in Pattukottai taluk of Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu which manages a group of farms successfully. The experiences of this association contain many useful lessons that may benefit farmers elsewhere, and the functioning of the association is described below. Tamil Nadu is blessed with 56,000 ha of potential area for development of brackish water aquaculture. However, the area under shrimp aquaculture during 2001-02 was only 9.5% and the total shrimp production was also very low.