During my lengthy career as a consultant in aquaculture, I – like many of you – have witnessed a long and periodic parade of research recommendations that aim to remedy the constraints and shortcomings of aquaculture production.
As is to be expected, many of these recommendations echo the recommendations of the past.
Many of the problems associated with aquaculture require long-term commitments, and therefore require a refocus and reinvigoration of the process designed to alleviate a particular problem.
In any list of constraints to the expansion of aquaculture and the research priorities to relax those constraints, you will always see:
• Items associated with feeds and feed ingredients and alternatives;
• Disease and ways to mitigate and prevent it:
• Water-use efficiency; and efficiencies associated with other scarce resources
• Economic and capital-funding bottlenecks; and
• A host of other important and relevant topics.
While all of these priorities deserve our attention and support, the list has always been rather predictable.
And in that sense, it leaves people like me with a feeling that we are making very little progress if any at all.
Let’s be clear.
Progress is always being made, to the credit of the public and private research institutions and entrepreneurs that strive every day to make a difference.
This is more a problem of perception than reality.
…read the rest and much, much more in Issue 3, 2015 of Fish Farming News.
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