JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Demand for tilapia goes up

by

20140118

There has been a big in­crease in de­mand for farm-raised tilapia since the start of the year. Sales at the Sug­ar­cane Feeds Cen­tre (SFC) in Long­denville have in­creased from 500 pounds to 2,000 pounds a week.SFC project di­rec­tor Suresh Ben­ny told the T&T Guardian con­sumers had been buy­ing more of the farmed-raised fish be­cause of con­cerns about pol­lu­tion fol­low­ing the oil spills last month.

Ben­ny said there had been in­creas­ing de­mand for the tilapia since last year af­ter the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion em­barked on a pro­mo­tion cam­paign and in­tro­duced ini­tia­tives to open more mar­kets for lo­cal farm­ers.There is now an arrange­ment in place where the SFC is pur­chas­ing tilapia from farm­ers and pro­cess­ing and mar­ket­ing the fish.The SFC is cur­rent­ly sell­ing tilapia di­rect­ly to cus­tomers at $15 a pound. Arrange­ments have not yet been made to sup­ply the farm raised fish to su­per­mar­kets.

Ben­ny said there were plans to boost pro­duc­tion and farm­ers with idle ca­pac­i­ty might soon start ramp­ing up to meet the grow­ing de­mand.He added there had been a lev­el­ling off of ma­rine fish­eries and aqua­cul­ture was ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate more than 50 per cent of the glob­al de­mand for fish by 2015.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored