Aquaculture Is the Art of Cultivating the Plants and Animals Indigenous to Water
i. Definitions
1.one Aquaculture
1.two Systems and scale
1.three Rural aquaculture
1.i Aquaculture
Aquaculture or farming in water is the aquatic equivalent of agriculture or farming on land. Defined broadly, agriculture includes farming both animals (animal husbandry) and plants (agronomy, horticulture and forestry in part). Similarly, aquaculture covers the farming of both animals (including crustaceans, finfish and molluscs) and plants (including seaweeds and freshwater macrophytes). While agriculture is predominantly based on use of freshwater, aquaculture occurs in both inland (freshwater) and coastal (brackishwater, seawater) areas.
FAO (1988) introduced a definition of aquaculture which reduces its confusion with capture fisheries:
Aquaculture is the farming of aquatic organisms, including fish, molluscs, crustaceans and aquatic plants. Farming implies some course of intervention in the rearing process to enhance production, such every bit regular stocking, feeding, protection from predators, etc. Farming also implies individual or corporate ownership of the stock beingness cultivated. For statistical purposes, aquatic organisms which are harvested by an individual or corporate torso which has owned them throughout their rearing menstruum contribute to aquaculture, while aquatic organisms which are exploitable by the public equally a mutual holding resource, with or without advisable licences, are the harvest of fisheries.The above definition is significant as it introduces a social criterion (ownership of the stock throughout the rearing flow) to authorize the production engineering aspects.
Rural aquaculture could significantly improve the welfare of small-scale-scale farming households which take been affected by a decline in wild fish equally in Svay Rieng province, Kingdom of cambodia.
In some countries, aquaculture depends on capture fisheries for its supply of wild seed and feed. The production of seed from a hatchery is defined as aquaculture but the subsequent production of adult fish falls inside aquaculture only if the stock is endemic past an private or corporate body during grow-out. If hatchery-produced seed are stocked in a large water torso, and the production harvested by the public, it is categorised as culture-based or enhanced fisheries.
Ownership of fish-aggregating devices such equally brush parks in large water bodies does not confer ownership of the capture fisheries and is not aquaculture.
Although the FAO definition of aquaculture is an important contribution to our agreement of aquaculture, greyness areas remain especially in relation to ricefields and culture-based fisheries. FAO classifies rice-cum-fish culture as aquaculture but there are complex inter-relationships between wild fish and aquaculture in ricefields which defy generalisation and definition. Farmers have defenseless wild fish in ricefields since fourth dimension immemorial, oft building trap ponds to harvest them when h2o levels fall at the end of the rainy season. The fish benefit from the modified rice field which, besides providing them with a habitat, also facilitates harvest. Farmers may also make the rice field dikes and screen outlets college to facilitate growth and harvest of wild fish without resorting to either feeding or intentionally stocking wild or hatchery-raised seed.
Stocking of water bodies with either wild or hatchery-raised seed is aquaculture if the stock is owned individually or by a corporate trunk until harvest only information technology becomes capture fisheries if there is open up access for the general public. Circuitous social issues relating to use of traditionally communal h2o bodies for aquaculture lead to difficulties, frequently at the expense of the rural poor.
1.2 Systems and calibration
The blazon and scale of intensity of aquaculture systems are best considered in relation to the evolution of agronomics since agricultural and aquaculture systems follow similar paths and are often integrated. Indeed, nearly small-scale aquaculture may need to be integrated with agriculture, as future fish farmers already farm crops and livestock and nutrient inputs for aquaculture are most likely to originate on-farm in inland areas (Edwards et al., 1988).
Settled agronomics was classified into three phases to illustrate the way aquaculture may evolve on small-scale-scale farms (Ibid.), recognising that there are examples of Phase ii which are skipped in the procedure of modernisation:
ane. Settled Agronomics Phase 1 (ingather-dominated) is feature of pre-industrial societies with nigh country under food crops. Livestock are kept mainly for draught; the organisation includes scavenging poultry and pigs. At that place is limited integration between crops and animals. Large ruminants that depend on rough grazing stubble in the fields after crop harvest and are fed straw. Rice bran is fed to pigs and poultry. Livestock manure fertilises the field but the farming organization is mainly crop-based due to the limited number of livestock. This system was feature of much of Western Europe until nigh 1850 and applies to many small-scale-calibration farms in developing countries today, peculiarly those in marginal areas. In areas of lighter population density where fish is a traditional function of the diet, farmers rely generally on capture fisheries. As population densities increase and capture fisheries decline, at that place may be recourse to aquaculture. Most pocket-size-scale farmers in Asian developing countries likewise as in Africa and Latin America fall within this category equally they have little or no involvement in aquaculture.
2. Settled Agriculture Phase 2 (integrated crop/livestock) was characteristic of much of Western Europe and the eastern United states from 1850 to 1945. These were called mixed farms because livestock production was based on arable crops and improved pasture. Livestock were closely integrated with crops because the former fed on the latter, and manure helped maintain soil fertility together with nitrogen fixing legumes. They were nigh a closed self-sustaining organization relying on local or subcontract-based nutrient cycling (Tivy, 1987). Their aquaculture equivalent is the traditional Chinese integrated agriculture-aquaculture system.
3. Settled Agriculture Phase 3 (industrial monoculture) is based on agro-industrial inputs. Initially developed in 1850, it but began to replace the traditional mixed farming system in Western Europe in 1950. Its major features are improved genetic varieties, chemical fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides, pharmaceutical chemicals, feed concentrates, pelleted feed and mechanisation. Most phase 3 farms enhance only a single species because of increasing technical complexities and economies of scale. Much western and Japanese aquaculture belong to phase 3, equally is recently developed intensive shrimp culture.
This classification may be compared to that of the World Commission on Surround and Development (WCED 1987) which was elaborated further past Chambers et al. (1989), and utilised by Demaine (1994) for his analysis of the agenda for sustainable agricultural development in the Asia-Pacific region.
Global agriculture is divided into three classes: resource-poor agriculture; Greenish Revolution; and industrial agriculture. The third type of agriculture is associated with rainfed dryland, upland and swampy lowland, often peripheral areas where farming systems are much more fragile and as a consequence, complex and diverse. Abbreviated as "Third CDR" (complex, various, risk-prone), it broadly corresponds with Settled Agronomics Stage 1.
Greenish Revolution agriculture is usually found in national "agronomical heartlands" in fertile areas, either irrigated or rainfed lowlands, close to major population centres. Although information technology includes both large and small farms it essentially corresponds to Settled Agronomics Phase 3 as does the WCED industrial agriculture; both are monoculture which rely heavily on agro-industry. The latter comprises large farms and is mainly found in the developed earth although there are enclaves in developing countries.
Table 1. Full general correlation betwixt various schema for the classification of scale of farming systems.
| System | Authors | ||||||
| Settled Agriculture Stage 1 (crop dominated) | Settled Agriculture Phase ii (integrated crop/livestock)* | Settled Agriculture | Edwards et al., (1988) | ||||
| Resource-poor agriculture | Light-green revolution agriculture | Industrial agronomics | WCED (1987) | ||||
| Subsistence* | Artisanal* | Lazard et al., (1991) | |||||
| Specialised* | Industrial* | ||||||
| Blazon 1 aquaculture* | Martinez-Espinosa (1995) | ||||||
| Type 2 aquaculture* | |||||||
| Counterbalanced model* | Edwards et al., (1996) | ||||||
*Include sand/or refers specifically to farming systems which include aquaculture, in part or entirely.
An of import difference between the types of agriculture defined by Edwards et al. (1988) and WCED (1987) is the inclusion of an integrated crop/livestock category by the former in Settled Agriculture Stage 2. This has been proposed every bit an important pathway by which resource-poor minor farming households may become aquaculturists (Edwards, 1993). Nonetheless, a balanced model that uses both on-farm and off-subcontract resource may be required for aquaculture to contribute significantly to increased welfare (Edwards, et al., 1996). Other schemes for defining scale or intensity of aquaculture systems may exist related to the classification discussed to a higher place (Table 1).
In a study of Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa, Lazard et al. (1991) characterised iv types of aquaculture past degree of commercialisation:
- Aquaculture for subsistence (family-level);
- Artisanal aquaculture, producing for the market on a small-scale-scale
- Specialised aquaculture in which various stages of the production cycle are carried out by different farmers; and
- Industrial-calibration aquaculture.
More recently, Martinez-Espinosa (1995) proposed two types for the development of rural aquaculture:
- Blazon ane aquaculture for the "poorest of the poor" characterised by existence very low price or very low output, basically subsistence in nature simply possibly bartering or selling a small part of the produce to neighbours and in local markets. This is equivalent to the family-level blazon of Lazard et al., (1991).
- Type 2 aquaculture which is "less poor" and comprises the operations of well-off farmers who sell most of their produce for economical benefit. This is essentially the same as the Lazard et al., (1991) artisanal aquaculture.
These categories may be compared with the more common classification of aquaculture based on productive engineering science, particularly feed, dividing culture systems into extensive, semi-intensive and intensive. These terms are widely use but defined in diverse ways, often imprecisely, or not at all. The usage outlined below is in mutual use (Edwards et al., 1988; 1993):
- Extensive culture systems receive no intentional nutritional inputs only depend on natural food in the culture facility, including that brought in by h2o menstruum e.thou., currents and tidal substitution.
- Semi-intensive culture systems depend largely on natural food which is increased over baseline levels by fertilisation and/or utilise of supplementary feed to complement natural nutrient.
- Intensive civilization systems depend on nutritionally complete diets added to the system, either fresh, wild, marine or freshwater fish, or on formulated diets, usually in dry pelleted form.
Although the classification is based on feed, increasing intensification is correlated with higher levels of other inputs such as seed, labour, majuscule and direction. The system is less relevant for molluscs than for crustaceans and finfish because molluscs are always cultured on natural nutrient irrespective of the level of other inputs. It has limited relevance for cultivation of aquatic plants.
one.3 Rural aquaculture
The term rural aquaculture derives from the traditional dichotomy of development: rural or agricultural and urban or industrial. The overriding priority in rural development is to address widespread poverty and inequity in developing countries (WCED, 1987). Implicit in the term is the promotion of aquaculture systems appropriate to the resource base of pocket-size-scale farming households either through extensive or semi-intensive aquaculture (Martinez-Espinosa, 1995). Given that the term implies an orientation towards the needs of the lower socio-economic groups, rural aquaculture may embrace both inland and littoral aquaculture systems.
In that location is also a need to consider intensified production but in an environmentally sustainable way. Once farmers proceeds confidence and feel at lower levels of production, they may wish to change their level of production from subsistence or artisanal to entrepreneurial or commercial and get increasingly specialist aquaculture farmers. This requires increasing use of off-subcontract, agro-industrial inputs and greater involvement with urban markets. But information technology needs to exist done in a balanced way, combining Settled Agriculture Phases 2 (integration) and three (agro-industrial inputs) to avoid environmental deposition (Edwards et al., 1996).
Rural aquaculture is broadly defined as follows:
... the farming of aquatic organisms by small-scale farming households or communities, unremarkably past extensive or semi-intensive low-price product engineering science advisable to their resources base. The resources-poor base of most farms requires off-farm agro-industrial inputs to intensify production. This implies apply of mainly inorganic fertilisers rather than formulated feed to provide low market place value produce affordable to poor consumers.An abbreviated version of the definition is as follows:
... the farming of aquatic organisms by modest farming households using mainly all-encompassing and semi-intensive husbandry for household consumption and/or income.
Source: https://www.fao.org/3/x6941e/x6941e04.htm
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