J. Larsson et al., ECOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS AND APPROPRIATION OF ECOSYSTEM SUPPORT BY SHRIMP FARMING IN COLOMBIA, Environmental management, 18(5), 1994, pp. 663-676
Shrimp farming in mangrove areas has grown dramatically in Asia and La
tin America over the past decade. As a result, demand for resources re
quired for farming, such as feed, seed, and clean water, has increased
substantially. This study focuses on semiintensive shrimp culture as
practiced on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. We estimated the spatial
ecosystem support that is required to produce the food inputs, nurser
y areas, and clean water to the shrimp farms, as well as to process wa
stes. We also made an estimate of the natural and human-made resources
necessary to run a typical semiintensive shrimp farm. The results sho
w that a semiintensive shrimp farm needs a spatial ecosystem support-t
he ecological footprint-that is 35-190 times larger than the surface a
rea of the farm. A typical such shrimp farm appropriates about 295 J o
f ecological work for each joule of edible shrimp protein produced. Th
e corresponding figure for industrial energy is 40:1. More than 80% of
the ecological primary production required to feed the shrimps is der
ived from external ecosystems. In 1990 an area of 874-2300 km2 of mang
rove was required to supply shrimp postlarvae to the farms in Colombia
, corresponding to a total area equivalent to about 20-50% of the coun
try's total mangrove area. The results were compared with similar esti
mates for other food production systems, particularly aquacultural one
s. The comparison indicates that shrimp farming ranks as one of the mo
st resource-intensive food production systems, characterizing it as an
ecologically unsustainable throughput system. Based on the results, w
e discuss local, national, and regional appropriation of ecological su
pport by the semiintensive shrimp farms. Suggestions are made for how
shrimp farming could be transformed into a food production system that
is less environmentally degrading and less dependent on external supp
ort areas.