While the shrimp farming is shirking, fish farming is on the rise for the past three years in Krishna district.  Thousands of acres of paddy fields are turning into fish ponds in the delta region, especially the mandals located on the border of West Godavari district.

According to estimates, fish farming is being taken up in more than one lakh acres while the shrimp and prawn farming is limited to a mere 5,000 to 7,000 acres.

The officials records say that fish farming is done in 75,000 acres and shrimp farming in 5,000 acres.

It may be recalled that shrimp and prawn culture began way back in 1980 as the farmers preferred aquaculture to agriculture. They reaped huge profits in ‘dollars’ during 1999-2000.

As their fellow farmers made sudden fortune, several other farmers who were into agriculture also shifted to aquaculture and shrimp and prawn culture has leaped to nearly one lakh acres from 30,000 acres in 1999.

But they suffered a major loss as the tiger shrimp variety suffered virus attack in the following years and exports had fallen drastically.

At last, shrimp farming is being done in only 5,000 acres, and the farmers are also going for vannamei shrimp variety as it can survive the virus comparing to tiger variety. But the shrimp farmers have turned to fish cultivation instead of the shrimp as they had ready to use ponds.

According to a farmer, the fish cultivators, majority of them businessmen and local politicians, are now paying `50,000 to 75,000 rent for an acre of fish tank per year in the district and are getting `60,000 to `70,000 profit per year.

Bhupathi Raju, an aqua farmer from Nidamarru village of Kruthivennu mandal, said, “I had first taken up shrimp farming in 1982 and got good profits in the initial years. But later I had to suffer losses due to various reasons including virus attack. Slowly, I stopped it and started agriculture (paddy cultivation). But I started fish farming two years back as there was no water for paddy cultivation for Rabi crop for the past two years due to delta modernisation works.”

Another farmer, MV Subba Rao of Matlam village, who too suffered losses in shrimp farming, said that he had given his land for lease and added that he had applied for the registration of the fish ponds as the government had made it compulsory.

When contacted, assistant director of fisheries department, T Kalyanam, said, that as many as 4,989 farmers registered their tanks  by June 6, 2013. He also said that it was mandatory for the farmers to register their tanks with the government.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Andhra Pradesh / by Express News Service – Vijayawada / February 03rd, 2014