The meeting was convened by Ayyappan, Deputy Director-General, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), and Chief Executive Officer, NFB, in a bid to elicit views from farmers, feed manufacturers and others on the revival of shrimp culture.
Kondala Rayudu, secretary, Andhra Pradesh Prawn Farmers Association, wanted the Government to develop the domestic market into a substitute to the foreign market so as to bail out shrimp culture from the crisis. As the shrimp culture was treated as export-oriented, it was totally left to the mercy of exporters. Consequently, the shrimp growers were getting poor prices for their produce, much lower than the input cost on many occasions, he regretted.