According to collected statistics, the tilapia export quantity in first quarter was on a declining curve while the export to America dropped as sharp as 19%, which directly cause the fish price down.
Low market demand of spring fry although its quantity plummeted 50%
Because of the cold wave, the fry quantity dropped to half in first quarter on year-on-year basis. The spring fry is scarce. Farmers all stocked the fry from end of April to mid-May, which is delayed more than 20 days compared with that of previous years. As a result, the fry production period was also delayed.
Besides the decreased spring fry supply, the market demand also dropped. The quantity of stocked fry in the first half of dropped about 30% on the year-on-year basis. All the farming regions’ needs decreased sharply, especially in west Guandong.
Continuous fish price downturn bring about differentiated farming.
In the end of May, tilapia price in Hainan, Pearl River Delta and west Guangdong slipped slightly, dropping range at 0.2-0.5 yuan/500g. The price of 500g above size was 3.8~4.1 yuan/jin while 500g below was 3.1-3.3 yuan/jin. The delayed over-winter fish going to market caused intensive and simultaneous selling. But the procuremnt price of processing factories dropped, plus decreased export orders, causing poor tilapia market.
While the fish price dropped all the way, the fish feed price, however, was jumping. Besides, hit by the summer high-incidence season of streptococcosis, many tilapia farmers lost their farming confidence and started to decrease the farming quantity or began to culture other species of fishes.
According to Mr. Ji Dongwei, the sales director of Hainan Progift Aqua-Techo Co. Ltd, a large number of tilapia farmers this year choose to farm other fishes or decrease the farming density, which has decreased to 1000-2500 No./mu. This trend is also led to due to the fear of streptococcosis break.
“The price has dropped to 3.8 yuan/jin, but it’s still 0.5 yuan/jin higher than that of the same period in last year. There is still profit space under the three-dimensional mixed culture mode,” said Mr Zhao Guoliang, the Manager in ordinary fish feed department of Alpha Feed Group in Jiangmen, Guangdong. He also stated that the main obstacle ahead of tilapia farming was still the disease factor. And apart from the water quality, weather and other outside causes, feed was also the one part that caused disease break. Some farmers bought low-end feed to save costs, but that feed often lead to different disease. He suggested that choosing healthy and safe feed should be the top way to prevent tilapia disease.
Changing traditional farming concept is the key to tilapia industry. A farmer called Xu Jinhui told our journalist that differentiated tilapia farming made him stand out of the competitive market. In the early stage, he was extremely cautious about choosing superior fry and feed, which was necessary to produce fine-quality fish; in the later stage he would focus on domestic market to gain more profits.
Bright future is possible although constrained by drug residue and competition
Mr. Ji Dongwei offered his analysis about the bottleneck in tilapia industry development that there were two most challenging problems: food safety, lacking regulating policies and guidance towards standardized tilapia farming; competition pressure that the tilapia production in Southeast Asia region increased year after year with a relatively cheaper production cost. Besides, the similar species of fish also brings competition, such as golden pompano, channel catfish, salmon etc. According to his estimation, 2016 production might shrink because of low stock of last-winter fish and decreased fry stocking this year.
Other industry insiders believes that Sino-American trade war and drug residue has improved the export threshold, which would affect the whole industry market. And drug residue probelm can’t be solved in short term. It takes time to research and develop new effective drugs to prevent and cure the streptococcosis.
Bright future is possible because of the large international demand, cheap price, high production and low costs, which are all the advantages of tilapia industry and can’t be replaced.
Tilapia industrial transformation in China is urgent
According to Mr. Han Xuefeng, the secretary-general of Hainan Province Tilapia Brand Building and Promotion Association，supply-demand relationship decides the tilapia price downturn in recent years. Present tilapia market condition is in the condition of supply exceeding demand.
One one hand, shift export market into domestic consumption. The trouble of export has caused the decrease of production. Therefore, the mode of excessive depending on export should be changed, which means to expand the domestic market. Put great efforts into develop characteristic products in line with Chinese consumption habits and build famous brand for domestic marketing.
On the other hand, set up rating system for tilapia. Rank the fish according to farming mode and fish index. Building regional biological farming mode to guide the mass farmers into sustainable development and minimize environment damage. Lead the consumers to buy the fish by rating and achieve the rule of high price coming to high quality to improve farming revenue.
