Shrimp farmers in Indonesia and Thailand and tilapia farmers in China will receive training and knowledge to help them improve their livelihoods and increase collaboration to manage and improve water quality and reduce incidences of disease outbreaks.
The Aquaculture Improvement Projects will create a zonal approach to form local management groups for greater sustainability in the fish-farming environment.
“We are proud to support SFP on this project, which combines environmental sustainability with preserving and sustaining important food sources,” said Kathleen McLaughlin, President, Walmart Foundation.
“We look for opportunities to bring together projects that improve livelihoods and protect the environment; this grant helps us support the great work of SFP in achieving winning outcomes for the people in the aquaculture industry and the environment.”
Aquaculture can help assist in the ever-increasing demand for seafood while ensuring that existing fisheries remain sustainable and consistent. With funding from the Walmart Foundation, SFP will scale up current efforts to reach more farming households through farm-level training. This grant will significantly increase the scale of direct impact like improved practices on farms and in post-harvest handling, as well as indirect impacts like policy and industry practices.
“Small-scale aquaculture farming families in Asia provide the bulk of farmed fish and shrimp that ends up on our plates. Training them on improved production practices and the value of working together to improve the environment they are growing these fish and shrimp in is a win-win for everyone,” said Anton Immink, Aquaculture Director at SFP.
“The Walmart Foundation’s support for Aquaculture Improvement Projects encourages shared environmental management that reduces risks and increases benefits for all producers and gives smallholder farming families the chance to benefit from improved market access.”
The Indonesian project will focus on the local shrimp farming industry and developing local resource management groups across much of Indonesia to benefit from training programs, knowledge-sharing and resource use. SFP will reach 10,000 farmers in Indonesia with close collaboration with suppliers and the government.
The Thailand shrimp project will focus on local resource co-management and specifically target underserved women in farming families through the delivery of training around disease control, water quality monitoring and business management. The grant from the Walmart Foundation will help SFP target a wider area of Thailand to engage more stakeholders in the pursuit of safe, sustainable aquaculture.
China has been the world’s leading tilapia-farming region for nearly two decades, and SFP is well established in assisting the local tilapia industry in improving practices. The Walmart Foundation grant will help further the work of SFP and help SFP develop a Code of Good Practice that farms will follow both individually and collectively.
In addition, the grant will help SFP engage with more than 2,000 small-scale farmers of which a third are women. Women play a particularly pivotal role in family-owned hatcheries and training will be targeted toward their technical empowerment in terms of water quality and business management.
“Empowering women is a global necessity, and the Walmart Foundation is working to help provide women with the resources they need to succeed,” Ms McLaughlin said.
“More than a billion people live in poverty worldwide and approximately 70 per cent of them are women, so this grant’s focus on helping women farmers is important.”
