White shrimp prices have come down generally in China in the last couple of weeks, in some cases by as much as $.50 - CNY3 – per pound. The reason appears to the be early harvesting of sick shrimp, to thin out the ponds, due to the heavy rainfall experienced in the last month, reports Shuichan News.
After the continual rainfall, aquaculture in the South China has still been in face of many challenges with the coming of summer along with the increasingly high temperature.
One of the main problems is that there are a great number of sick whiteleg shrimp in the production areas. While in the East China, the shrimp price stays high compared with that of last year, but there is a decrease from that earlier this year owing to the increasing number of shrimps in the markets.
China’s shrimp price index is reported to be 147.78 on May 28, decreasing by 2.31 from that of the last statistics day (May 21). In the meantime, there is also a slight decline in the index for the statistics week from May 22 to May 28 from that of the previous one.
The continually heavy rainfall and the following hot weather have forced the farmers to get rid of all the sick shrimps in many production areas of the South China. And the market entry of these small and sick shrimps has led to the decreases in the market prices as well as the farm gate prices.
According to some insiders in Yangxi, although the recently heavy rainfall has no direct effect on the local shrimp farming currently and the farmers are planning to stock the second round of shrimp seedlings at present, they have suffered from the great damage to the initial farming of shrimps this year caused by the rainfall in the early May and the high temperature during the past few days.
It is learnt that the sick shrimps are mostly priced at around 100 yuan/jin (1 jin = 0.5 kilo) and any problem during this period is likely to take a toll on the shrimp supply from July to August this year.
Most shrimps are still cultivated inside the greenhouses and in East China and there is a slight price decline resulting from the market entry of more and more shrimps. The seedling stocking in the outdoor ponds has started in the beginning of this month and most farmers have finished the stocking of over a half of their seedlings so far. The farming situation has been stable at present, although the survival rate is low in a few production areas because of the rainfall. At the same time, in the South China, the prospect is positive for the shrimp price thanks to the weather and the farming areas have been on the rise, according to some insider in Sheyang, Jiangsu.
Regarding the overseas shrimp farming, the environment is satisfying in Vietnam, although the farming technologies are not satisfactorily advanced there, said the insiders of the China’s shrimp industry after their visit to Vietnam’s production areas. Although the survival rate is comparatively low for the Asian tiger shrimps, it is good for the whiteleg shrimps. In addition, the price is only about half of that in China for the whiteleg shrimps of similar sizes.
As to the processing plants, Guolian has started to purchase shrimps this week and most of its shrimps come from Vietnam. And the managers from the plants in the west part of Guangdong have been busy with the preparation jobs before the shrimp purchase like contacting the shrimp ponds’ owners and checking the shrimps.
Although there are only a limited number of large commodity shrimps left after the farmers’ ridding the ponds of sick shrimps, it is possible for the shrimp price to rise thanks to the temporarily peaking consumer demand brought by the Dragon Boat Festival and the processing plants’ starting purchasing shrimps in large quantities.