Prawn Farming - how can Australia compete?

Abstract

The next three years will be very important to the Australian prawn farming industry. It is a period during which local prawn farmers must reach their productive potential and establish a significant local market demand for their product or progressively lose opportunities to imports. The time frame will be dictated by the pace of change in the south-east Asian prawn farming and processing industries which may even challenge local fishermen for the remainder of their share of the domestic market in the not too distant future.
There are some signs that this process has already commenced, with the only uncertainty being the effect of the current economic downturn on market demand for prawn products. Both prawn fishermen and prawn farmers have good reasons not to be too complacent about the need to meet the challenge to supply domestic demand for a quality product at a reasonable price.
This paper will examine development of the southeast Asian and Australian prawn farming industries as well as reasons why the Australian prawn farming industry has been slow in reaching its full productive potential. It is suggested that prawn farming can be quite successful in Australia, provided farmers can reduce production costs and provide a quality product for the local market.