Senior API Fellow Dias Pradadimara

Since the early 1980s there has been a dramatic growth of shrimp consumption around the globe, mostly in the developed world. Japan alone in the last twenty years has imported between 200 to 300 thousand tons of frozen shrimp.

Southeast Asian shrimp farmers have been major players who produce and supply these shrimp from highly dispersed coastal areas, and to a lesser extent from inland farms. While there has been a steady growth and progression in the production and export of shrimp from this area of the world, this has been accompanied by a dramatic transformation in the ways that shrimp is being farmed, sold, collected, processed, and traded in S.E. Asia, according to Mr Dias Pradadimara, currently a senior fellow of the Asian Public Intellectuals (API), an organization funded by The Nippon Foundation. Pradadimara recently spoke at an API seminar at the Nippon Foundation in Tokyo.

Pradadimara researched the current state of shrimp production in S.E. Asia in order to identify the area's local dynamics within the global economic situation. He did research at the local village and regional levels, especially in the eastern part of the Indonesian archipelago, but he also included the situation in the Philippines and Thailand. He says there have been fundamental changes in the shrimp production and aquaculture industries of these countries. This industry has also been affected by regulatory measures imposed by importing countries on the ways that the industry operates.

In the past shrimp were simply fished at sea and sold based on size and price, not according to any particular brand, says Pradadimara. But, in the 1980s the industry started shifting from sea fishing to farm-raised shrimp. At first the industry concentrated on exports to Japan, but in recent years the U.S. has become a major importer of S.E. Asian shrimp, and as Japan changed its import sources this has contributed rises and declines in S.E. Asian production.

As the shrimp farm production increased, production shifted from industrial areas to more far-flung locations. This necessitated investments in more local cold storage facilities. Japanese investments played a major role at this time. As investments increased this was accompanied by more extensive or semi-intensive farming, and incentives for the participation of foreign big capital.

In the early stages, the State played various roles in the expansion of shrimp farming in the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand, especially in terms of providing easy credit and policies regarding the industry. Overall farm expansion and investments continued into the mid-1990s, but transformation has occurred as markets such as the European Union demanded more regulation and quality controls.

At present, says Pradadimara, there is large-scale corporatization of shrimp farms in all three countries (Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines), the main centers of intensive farming. This means fewer major players as competition intensifies. In one sense this has contributed to simpler supply chains, but it also reduces the number of players in the industry. The State's role too, while important, is diminishing as the industry becomes more centralized.