The Compound Livestock Feed Manufacturers Association of India (CLFMA), the national trade association for the livestock and poultry feed industry, has extended its interests to aquaculture by requesting USSEC to design and implement an aquaculture workshop for entrepreneurs in East India. 

Kolkata, in the province of West Bengal, depends on fish for daily food, a food habit primarily driven by culture. West Bengal produces about 1.58 million tonnes of fish per annum and is second only to the province of Andhra Pradesh, which produces about 2 million tonnes of fish annually. While Andhra Pradesh uses 35,000 metric tonnes (MT) of fish feed every month, West Bengal uses only about 3,500 MT per month, indicating the need to adopt better feed and fish farming technology. With this objective in mind, CLFMA and USSEC collaborated on a workshop to influence change in market behaviour and enhance the use of soy-based fish feed in the region.

Six renowned resource professionals directly connected with the fish and shrimp sectors of the aquaculture industry were engaged by USSEC to impart technology and trade messages to the 96 entrepreneurs who attended the interactive workshop. Officials of the state government also took a keen interest, and attended to learn about new technologies and government support programs.

“This is the second workshop conducted by USSEC in the region in the past two years and since then, there have been significant inroads made in the utilization of soy-based fish feeds,” said R Umakanth, aquaculture consultant for USSEC India.

Discussions and recommendations made at the workshop further motivated the industry to advance its aquaculture status to produce more fish and shrimp in the region.