Red orange blue emerald green overseas

Red orange, blue, emerald green, overseas. View of the sky, the famous red soil of Madagascar plays with the reflections of the Sun, while tens of basins of intense blue behind the mangrove, draw a table to the Paul Klee. These strange rectangles, as marine fields, align to the bottom of the Mahajamba wild Bay, Northwest of the big island. What are Millions of shrimp! It is here that breeds Aqualma, the largest farm livestock in the country, with an annual production of 3,000 tonnes. Here. It is finally that begins the epic of the famous shrimp of Madagascar, with the conquest of the "penaeus monodon", or shrimp Tiger, the largest of the usually consumed shrimp, the often so-called "prawns". This farm is the work of Aziz Hassan Ismail, founder of the Group Unima, now led by his son, Amyne, which exports some 7,500 tonnes per year for a turnover of EUR 70 million, or half of the production of the big island. Currently, two-thirds come from aquaculture and one-third of the fishing.

A Mahajamba, when Unima launches in aquaculture, early 1990s, there was no infrastructure, no that the forest, the sea, the mangrove, this precious ecosystem that dam to the erosion of the coast and serves as a nursery for fish wildlife. The village of Besakoa has barely fifteen inhabitants, who live in total self-sufficiency. The Group throws his vest on this site, because it offers 25 kilometres from tannes, totally infertile clay-sandy land formed by sedimentation behind the mangroves. So will he able to develop its shrimp larvae rearing ponds without altering this fragile but essential ecosystem on a thousand hectares. In addition, the mangrove is the role of filter for discharges of the farm to the sea.

Pest virus

While soaring aquaculture, from the 1980s, often resulted from massive pollution, the group, with the support of French experts and the UN food and agriculture (FAO), has to at the outset is the choice of a freshwater aquaculture: not question of saturate basins or to alter the quality of the water of the nearby sea. "A good shrimp must be happy," insists François Brenta, responsible for production. To not weigh excessively on the environment, we have chosen the semi-intensive rearing of an endemic species of the country, penaeus monodon, with 5 to 10 shrimp per square metre, from 10 to 50 times greater in China or Thailand densities.

Basin size in growout ponds, shrimp are five to six months to move from juvenile to adult size. For harvesting, they gently empty basins. Feet in the water, the men control and weigh catches, which are immediately placed under ice through mobile facilities. The rule is strict: maximum traceability and prohibition to leave the animal more than a minute in the open air. Eighteen ecosystem parameters are measured continuously in the aquaculture farm employs 650 people uses 1.3 million cubic metres of water per day and 5.700 tons of nutrients per year. With an obsession: avoid any contamination by viruses. Because the main danger to shrimp farming has a decade of specific viruses against which there is no "vaccine" or cure. "I worked in the Peru, which was in 1999 the world's leading producer of shrimp with 200,000 tonnes." At the time, talked about the pink gold, farms have multiplied in anarchic way, but when a virus has occurred, the country has lost 90 of his crop in six months, recalls François Brenta. To date, Madagascar was spared.

The shrimp is fragile because, said Yves Harache, delegate of the Ifremer in New Caledonia, "is how the process, it is not immune memory". Also, to exclude any risk of contamination, Unima has developed close and close a very demanding integrated string: "we are the only successful domestication of tiger shrimp, in other words we are producing our own broodstock, which spares us the risk of contaminated animals sea." "We can thus guarantee to 100 of larvae without pathogens", explains Marc Legroumellec, responsible for the domestication and biosecurity. The hatchery to packaging and distribution, Unima control the entire chain: the group opened this summer at the meeting a plant for the manufacture of foods for shrimp, and a cooking plant in Boulogne-sur-Mer. With this integration, it won the Red Label, there operate this winter with the launch of its own brand, Nossi-Bé.

A ruthless market

"In an international market of some 4.2 million tons per year, Madagascar and its 15,000 tonnes is that a drop of water, competed by more competitive and much less scrupulous than we, groups stressed Amyne Hassam Ismail." Our salvation lies in the top of range, this is why we we're fight for three years to get the Red Label and thus be the first non-European producer to obtain this certification in a new sector: the shrimp. Remains to educate consumers so that it differentiates the top and bottom of range.

For Unima, but also for the whole of the Malagasy, it is a matter of survival. Because the international market has become ruthless. The shrimp is now the first product of the sea in value, tuna and salmon! With exports estimated at US $ 11 billion, it would represent 19 of world trade of seafood products. The beginnings of this aquaculture can be traced to the 1970s, but the actual take-off date of the mid-1980s: referred to as the "shrimp fever." With success and terrible setback, due to the multiplication and spread of virus. In 1988, for example, the Chinese livestock crashing 200,000 to 70,000 tons. Today, the world shrimp reached more than 2 million tons per year, when these shellfish fisheries levelled off at 2.2 million tonnes and began to lose steam because of overfishing. Moreover, projects continue to multiply, to the Viet Nam, in Bangladesh, to the Brazil, in Iran... A

the head of 70 of the production of the planet, Asia dominates with, first line, China, the Thailand, the Viet Nam, the Indonesia and the India, but, in many Latin American countries, like Ecuador, this activity also occupies a central position.

Prices decline continues

In the face, appetite for American, Japanese and European consumers, who buy 90 of shrimp aquaculture, is not strong. In the US, consumption still rose by 6 in 2005, while in France it has doubled in ten years, up to 100,000 tonnes.

Other side of the coin, shrimp won status of end product to become since 2000 a commodity of mass with price oriented downward. A Latin America white shrimp worth more than 58 of the record reached in 1987, while giant tiger prawn has lost 63 over the course of 1997! "It is as for chicken, farms are growing, risks increase and prices fall, regrets Amyne Hassam Ismail." And unfortunately for us, in contrast to what occurred in the chicken, the distributors do reason on the price low and are not yet ready to pay more for quality. "Madagascar, shrimp professionals are convinced that all the components of a major crisis are in place. "Cheap is bad shrimp shrimp", said the American association of consumers Public Citizen, which denounced a continuous price decline environment and rural communities in the South.

Destruction of mangroves

Since the boom in shrimp farming, largely financed by international financial institutions as the World Bank, which saw a commodity for export and thus a development tool for poor countries, has unfortunately priced environmental, health and social. Deforestation, salinization of the land, pollution of estuaries, shrimp farms were of the devastation. They would be responsible for 10 less than the global destruction of mangroves. In many areas, especially along the Thai and Indonesian, deforestation has been more severe. "A Sumatra, are hundreds of kilometres which are colonized by any lawlessness, shrimp farms", said Michel Autrand marine aquaculture expert. In Thailand, intensification was such that between 1989 and 1996, 60 of livestock surfaces have been abandoned, too polluted to continue this activity! Rice, shrimp was ten times more than rice. According to him, each year, the "white spot" virus destroyed at least 10 of world production, and while the penaeus monodon is native of Asia, it has suffered both from diseases that the Asian farmers are converted to the penaeus vannamei, originally from Latin America, considered more resistant while smaller.

How long the Asian farmers will still meet the biosecurity standards required by the importing States Yves Harache, IFREMER, recalled that the first blows of battering were given in 2000 when the European Union banned the import of Thai and Indonesian shrimp lack adequate traceability. Since then, standards have become draconian, and the use of antibiotics is more authorized. However, if, as Unima in Madagascar, Ifremer in New Caledonia is achieved through advances in molecular biology to produce spawners closed circuit to eliminate any pathogenic risk, 90 of the farms continue to collect the larvae at sea, knowing that there are more than 30 own shrimp diseases. Fortunately, they threaten that crustaceans, without the risk of transmission to humans.

Peasants driven to exodus

Socially, the rise of the Devourer aquaculture of coastal spaces also led here and violent conflict there. Particularly in India, where he took that the Supreme Court is mixes to introduce a minimum of regulation, as thousands of farmers in the State of Andhra Pradesh were pushed to the exodus of their land and water pollution. The head of the combat, the famous environmentalist Vandana Shiva, who was then calculated that these farms provided 15 direct jobs and 50 indirect jobs, but depriving of resources 5,000 people!

Rohana Subasinghe, FAO aquaculture specialist, estimated that the attacks of the ecological associations are exaggerated. "The die has been victim of mistakes of youth, but deforestation of mangroves is more due to urbanization in shrimp farming, which, moreover, helped hundreds of thousands of families out of poverty", plaidet - it. The sector employ 1.5 million people of the unreliable data. Subasinghe also believes that the main abuses are being corrected. "The use of antibiotics has been banned, progress was made in the choice and management of sites, consumers require more and more stringent standards and certification for sustainable aquaculture procedures exist." During an international meeting in September, the FAO has thus presented in collaboration with Asian experts, the UN Environment Programme and the NGO World Wild Fund "The international principles for a sustainable shrimp", guide practices which must be inspired producing countries.

But, between good intentions and commercial reality, the step is not always easy to cross. While he oversaw projects in the four corners of the world, Michel Autrand observes that the fall of prices causes still greater intensification of farms, and increased health risks. The situation is all the more tense that the price of fish meal to feed the shrimp with 2 kilos of fish to produce 1 kilo of shrimp, has doubled in five years. "Only donors of order, i.e. the large surfaces, can break the vicious circle," he warned. Must be willing to pay the extra cost of a demanding certification, which is not yet safe, even if Wal-Mart has announced that he wanted that market certified shrimp. "Madagascar, leaders of Unima await with anxiety the horizon and build on the valorization of the"Queen Monodon. For poor countries, shrimp farming, provided they introduce environmentally friendly rules of the game environment, can still be a formidable pink gold. But, if its devaluation and its commoditization continues, then Public Citizen has reason: this small crustacean will become a "devastating delicacy".