According to reporting from Reuters, Norway will allow fish farming companies to raise their salmon and trout quotas. Norway is the world’s top salmon producer and fish farming is its largest export after oil and gas.
In a statement from Fisheries Minister Geir-Inge Sivertsen, the system regulating growth in salmon and trout farming will allow net capacity growth of up to 23,000 tonnes of salmon and trout.
Known as the “traffic light” system, the capacity regulation uses a red, green and yellow coding system to identify regions where growth is advisable based on environmental factors such as the prevalence of sea lice.
While fish farmers in nine regions were given a green light to raise output by six percent, two regions were designated yellow – meaning that output should remain unchanged. Two regions were listed as red and must cut outputs by six percent.
Producers seeking to raise their capacity must pay a fee to do so. Some of the new quotas will be allocated at a fixed price per tonne, while others will be distributed to the highest bidders.
