UN’s FAO promotes advancements of innovative agro-aquaculture systems to enhance blue growth in Asia-Pacific
13/06/2017 Kunming, China The Asia-Pacific region is witnessing considerable advancements and innovative approaches that combine agriculture and
aquaculture leading to improved livelihoods for smallholders, according to senior officials from the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
While the practice of adding fish to flooded rice paddies was established hundreds of years ago in China, and is now
recognized as one of the country’s Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems, the approach is being practiced in many other countries around the region. In more recent years, other
agro-aquaculture systems have followed, such as mixing shrimps into flooded paddies. The fish eat the pests in the water
and in turn the fish excrement fertilizes the plants.
Now, FAO and member countries are studying and promoting new innovations in these traditional practices, taking into
account varying socio-economic and environmental conditions. Different from traditional integrated fish farming, the
innovative integration of agro-aquaculture is characterized by a number of different approaches.
Introducing these methods helps to improve the income of small rice farmers where innovation in agro-aquaculture can
easily double the economic return. These can significantly improve productivity from the crop system. For instance, good
rice-fish farming practice can increase the rice yield by 20 percent while producing tonnes of fish and other aquatic
animals.
The methods are being introduced at a regional workshop on innovative agro-aquaculture for blue growth in Asia-Pacific
with 25 senior government officials from Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Philippines and Viet Nam. The
workshop is convened jointly by FAO’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific and FAO’s Strategic Programme on Sustainable Agriculture this week in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences (CAFS).
This work is helping to strengthen food systems in order to make them more productive and sustainable, one of FAO’s main
strategic objectives.
The workshop is emphasizing the potential to scale up agro-aquaculture with more robust market-oriented production and
an eye to better value chain development, particularly with respect to small-scale rice farming, which would greatly
benefit smallholder livelihoods.
“In promoting innovative integrated agro-aquacultural systems-such as rice-farming systems to areas where these are
still not common practices, it is key to take up a truly multi-stakeholder approach. There is an increasing potential to
promote such systems in a number of Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Viet Nam, Bangladesh, Philippines, Lao
PDR or Myanmar, but also in other areas of the world. South-South Cooperation is a very appropriate platform to scale up
innovative rice-fish and other IAA farming systems,” said Hans Dreyer, Director of FAO’s Agriculture Production and
Plant Protection Division.
“Innovative integrated agro-aquaculture is recognized as an effective approach to promote aquaculture for improved
efficiency and sustainable growth by the Chinese government. The Chinese Academy and its subsidiary institutions have
been supporting the innovation and dissemination of integrated agro-aquaculture farming technology and management
practices across China and have made great achievements. CAFS will closely collaborate with FAO to support the
dissemination and scaling up of successful stories in Asia,” added Cui Lifeng, President of the Chinese Academy of
Fishery Sciences during his opening remarks.
The participants will also visit field sites and share the status of adoption of different systems/practices among the
participant countries, both successes and failures. The country teams are also expected to draft national strategies and
develop business plans for scaling up appropriate innovative Agro-Aquaculture farming systems and practices based on the
in-depth analysis of major constraints and gaps in each of the individual countries.