Climate change seen as threat to shrimp production
“But when you process, your risk profile is much lower.
If it rains for two months, we don’t care. We don’t lose the whole harvest, so it’s a much more predictable business, and more predictable means more manageable,” he said.
Haagen said their company produced about 1,000 tons of shrimps that were sold directly to markets around the region and Manila and they are expecting to produce 800 to 1,000 tons of shrimp within the year.
His partner, Ludevito S. Batilong, president of Anderlude, said no plans for export are being considered at present because they want to satisfy the domestic demand first.
He said Davao City’s demand alone ranges from 5 to 10 tons a day and their company is shipping about 10 containers, or 140 to 180 tons every month to Manila.
He said they have 127 hectares of shrimp farms — 45 hectares in Dumoy, 14 hectares in Sta. Cruz and 68 hectares in Hagonoy.
The two started with only two hectares of shrimp nursery.
Haagen said the outbreak of avian flu in San Luis, Pampanga will increase the demand for seafood.
The Danish businessman said he and Batilong engage in sustainable shrimp production, meaning they use neither chemicals nor antibiotics to control the bacteria in the shrimp pens.
“I like it because it’s very sustainable. They way we do this is to use effective microorganisms. What we do is we drop them in the pond, and they eat the sludge, so the good bacteria when they eat the sludge, they clean the pond. But because [the] nature of bacteria [is] if they populate the sludge, then no other bacteria can move in,” he said.
He said “when these good bacteria have populated, there is no risk of invasion by bad bacteria” and it becomes good bio-protection from pests and diseases.
“These bacteria when they multiply, they float up and get eaten by the shrimp,” he said.
He said any good bacteria can be used because it’s not pathogenic and will not harm humans.
Haagen also bared plans to expand to Rizal town in Palawan, a move that will increase by two-fold their shrimp production.
He said a sister company there operates a coconut plantation, and the throwaway coconut husks can be a great source of electricity to operate the “paddle wheels that aerate the shrimp ponds.”
“So in order to have a sustainable coconut business, we can take all the wastes from our coconut business, use it to generate electricity and the electricity runs a shrimp farm. No waste, no pollution,” he said. (Antonio L. Colina IV/MindaNews)
