© TARS 2024
The Aquaculture Roundtable Series (TARS) 2024, hosted in Bangkok from 14-15 August, this year focussed on growth and industrialisation within Asia’s finfish farming industry. The event was a marked success, attracting an attendance of over 200 industry stakeholders – a 17 percent increase from the 2017 event. Key to drawing such a crowd, the event programme featured 40 industry experts from around the globe, who took part in an engaging mix of talks and breakout sessions.
The Industry Dialogue session explored investment challenges faced by Asia's aquaculture sector. Opinions on the reasons for these challenges varied from investment decisions being influenced by failures to secure consistent output, to consumers in Europe and the US’s perception of poor quality products from Asia. However, the session did highlight that, whilst there may be challenges, investors are indeed out there.
“We have investors with noble objectives of supplying protein globally. For aquaculture, the risk is at the production level,” said one participant, according to a press release.
The Fish Talk session focused on aquaculture technology advancements, featuring two presentations on the potential of RAS to produce juvenile groupers as well as to facilitate the grow-out phase. These presentations were followed by three young farmers who run a family business with proven success in pond culture and the marketing of Asian seabass and grouper fingerlings. They discussed challenges in production and marketing.
“In the Interactive Breakout Roundtables, a hallmark of TARS, participants exchanged ideas and opinions on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for tilapia, pangasius and marine fish. We see this as a way for each participant to voice their concerns and contribute to solutions, and as a group, provide takeaways for the industry,” said Zuridah Merican, TARS 2024 chairperson.
“The global economic environment affects Asia’s freshwater and marine fish farmers who are currently facing low farm gate prices, high costs of production and cyclic demands. The presence of many in core farming at this TARS showed a resilience and the need to network and work together to position themselves for the future growth of the industry,” concluded Merican.
Whilst this year’s event has just concluded, plans are already underway for the 2025 edition of the conference, which will focus on the shrimp farming industry.
