Page 16 - World Aquaculture Magazine - March 2011
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14
M
arch
2011
The aquafeed industry in Brazil
J
oão
M
anoel
1
and
C
ordeiro
A
lves
In less than 30 years Brazil has turned itself from a food
importer into one of the world’s great breadbaskets. It is the
first country to catch up with the traditional “big five” grain
exporters (America, Canada, Australia, Argentina and the
European Union). It is also one of the first tropical food-
producing giants; the big five are all temperate producers
).
Brazil is the largest animal feed producer in Latin Ameri-
ca and is third in the world after the United States and Chi-
na, as reported in Sindiracoes website (
.
br). In 2009, 58.4 million t were produced and the forecast
for 2010 is to produce more than 60.4 million t. Aquafeed is
less than 0.7 percent of this total.
Fish and shrimp feed demand during 2009 in the Brazil-
ian market once again surprised analysts and achieved 380
thousand t, confirming the intensive growth rate of indus-
trial aquaculture activity. The amount rose 17 percent above
the 324 thousand t produced in 2008, thanks to better in-
come distribution among families that increased consump-
tion of seafood in general. Forecast production for 2010 is
429 thousand t (
Table 1).
The bottleneck for aquaculture growth in the world is fish
oil and fishmeal, the production of which has been stable for
the last 20 years. Stocks are low, prices are high and sources
are limited. Because of increased economic and preserva-
tionist pressures on fishmeal and fish oil, the aquaculture
sector will have no choice but to further reduce its depen-
dency on these nutrient sources and opt for the use of plant-
based ingredients in feeds.
Brazil has an adequate, year-long supply of feed-grade
grains and agricultural by-products that are used as raw ma-
terials to the animal feed industry. The most used are: soy-
bean meal and oil, yellow corn grains, corn gluten meal, sor-
ghum, wheat and its byproducts, cottonseed meal, poultry
byproduct meal, meat meal, meat and bone meal, fishmeal,
brewers’ and distillers’ byproducts, vitamins and minerals.
Brazil has the climate, water resources and soil conditions
exceptionally favorable to the development of aquaculture.
The coastline is 8,500 km, freshwater resources are 12 per-
cent of the world’s total, electric energy is mainly supplied
by hydroelectric power stations and there are more than 5
million ha of flooded lands suitable for cage fish farming.
Although fish farming started in the 1940s, captive repro-
duction of native species, use of pellet feed, introduction of
modern strains of tilapia and carp brought development in
the 1980s. In 1992, production of extruded fish feed started
and, because of that technology, fish yields from ponds went
from 3,000 kg/ha/year to up to 40,000 kg/ha/year.
Brazilian industry and researchers have been focused
on reducing the dependency on fishmeal and fish oil in fish
diets, replacing those ingredients with alternative sources,
either animal or vegetable, especially those available year
round. Because of special climatic conditions, Brazilian fish
farmers can produce year round, so good quality and cheap
feed must be available all the time
Looking for better performance and compliance with
BAP-Best Aquaculture Practices, the feed industry has been
supported by Research Centers to produce feed of least cost,
but also to minimize the environmental impact of intensive
aquaculture. In this way, feed has been developed to avoid
solid wastes, including excess feed, uneaten feed and feces,
and losses of dissolved nutrients, such as N and P.
This interface, Feed Millers and Research Centers, has
been working on developing diets that minimize the impact
of these losses, because they damage water quality leading
to poor fish performance; including increased stress, illness,
poor growth, high mortality, off-flavor, poor feed conversion
ratios and increased production costs.
According to Pezzato and Barros (2005), fish nutrition
research in Brazil is focused on the majority of tropical spe-
cies with the potential to be reared. New experts are formed
in almost all states of the country through Post-Graduation
Programs that develop very important studies and there are
220 researchers, in 25 groups, studying some aspect of fish
nutrition. An increased number of publications in national
or internationals magazines have been produced as a conse-
quence of the increased amount of fish nutrition research
being carried out in our country.
Aquaculture in Brazil
In Brazil there is regular production of many aquatic ani-
mals that depend on artificial feeds; including carnivorous,
omnivorous and herbivorous fishes, freshwater and marine
shrimp, turtles for human consumption, ornamentals and
frogs. The most important are fishes and shrimp.
Shrimp farming
Shrimp farming started in Brazil in the 1970s with
Pe-
naeus japonicus
, when the salt industry was going through
a major crisis and shrimp farming seemed to be a good
alternative to use the big ponds built to evaporate water.
Natal (Rio Grande do Norte State) held, in 1981, the First
Brazilian Symposium on Shrimp Farming where research-
ers and shrimp farmers reported their results and motivated
many salt companies to convert salinas into ponds. Rain is
not predictable in this region and
P. japonicis
farming was
very good during dry years, but a sequence of rainy years
