Big plans for farmed output in Russia's Olympics region

In the recent couple of years farmed fish production in Krasnodarsky Krai Territory on the Black Sea coast of Russia has displayed certain positive trends, according to the local Department on biological resources, ecology and fishery as quoted by Yuga.

In fact, the prospects for the business in terms of market must be very good because the region's second most important city of Sochi will be hosting the Olympic Games in 2014.

More specifically, the output of market-size farmed fish has grown from 4500 tonnes in 2004 to 11,000 tonnes in January-September 2007 thanks to joint efforts of the province's authorities and fish farmers.

Now there are more than 500 multi-purpose farms which breed fish among other activities. They exploit ca.40,000 hectares of the water area with poor productivity. In the meantime, the water area exploited by specialized fish farms is three times smaller, while the production output of such farms is several times larger.

According to the province's law "On State Policy of Krasnodarsky Krai in the Sphere of Aquaculture", the rated fish productivity of the channel water bodies shall be 500 kilos per hectare, thus the province's non-specialized farms should be able to produce ca.20,000 tonnes of fish. However, in 2007 these small-scale operators are expected to grow only ca.3500 tonnes of fish. Though it is more than in the previous years, the amount is two times below the planned output taking into account leased water area.

For the whole region the production target for the 12 months of the current year 2007 is set at 15,000 tonnes. In order to help local fish farms meet the target the government will support the farms in sales of live fish in the street markets and in special outlets as well as to develop new technologies of fish processing.