Russian aquaculture sector displaying consistent growth

The aquaculture production in Russia has doubled over the past 10 years, this year it is expected to grow by 15%, reports Megafishnet.com.

This was announced by Deputy head of Russia’s Federal Agency for Fisheries (FAF for short, Rosrybolovstvo in Russian) Vasily Sokolov at the World Conference on Aquaculture held in Shanghai, according to TASS.

"In our country, aquaculture has only recently begun to develop actively and has embarked on the rails of technological development. Over the past 10 years, the volume of aquaculture production in Russia has doubled. Even during the pandemic, the sector shows the highest dynamics of development. And this year we expect that the growth will persist at 15%," he said and added that by 2030, production in this sector should reach at least 620 thousand tons.

Currently, according to him, the aquaculture production is dominated by traditional farmed fish objects - carp species ca.45% and salmonids 35%, and this volume is constantly growing. Vasily Sokolov also noted the positive dynamics in farmed salmon output, which has almost tripled over the past five years. "In the next two or three years, we believe that Russia will completely abandon import of salmonids," the official believes.

In the Russian market, he said, special attention is currently being paid to the support of small farms. "We consider them the most important component of the sector. Now they account for the main employment in aquaculture in Russia. And this is more than 3 thousand small and micro farms," Vasily Sokolov said and clarified that the share of enterprises that grow less than 10 tons per year accounts for almost 55%. Those who harvest 11-100 metriс tons per year amount to 35% and less than 1% is represented by large enterprises that grow more than 1,000 tonnes.

The deputy Head of Rosrybolovstvo also stressed that aquaculture is a knowledge-intensive direction that has large reserves as a supplier of not only food products, but also highly liquid raw materials for other industries.

Earlier, Rosrybolovstvo reported a 4.8-fold increase in salmon production in the first half of 2021 compared to one year ago. Salmonids culture is one of the key areas of the strategy for the development of the fisheries complex of the Russian Federation until 2030: by this year, according to the forecast, the output of farmed salmonids in Russia will reach 250 thousand tons.