Push to inject more muscle into water farming

By PAULA OLIVER

Aquaculture could be earning a billion dollars a year by 2020 if it is given an environment in which it can flourish, industry representatives told an annual fishing conference at the weekend.

Encompassing mussel, oyster, abalone and salmon farming, the growing industry is the subject of Vision 2020, a discussion paper put together by the Aquaculture Council.

Council chairman John Hannah said the industry wanted Vision 2020 to help people to understand the potential aquaculture offered, provoke debate and increase participation in water-based farming.

In doing so, the discussion document also gave a strong message to Fisheries Minister Pete Hodgson, who attended the Invercargill conference, that legislative barriers were getting in the way of the long-term goal.

Aquaculture is now worth $280 million a year to the country in earnings, but the industry predicts that will triple by 2020.

Mussels make up most of the earnings, totalling $200 million, 85 per cent of which is exported.

But king salmon and oyster cultivation are also playing increasingly big parts.

Under the Vision 2020 plan, other species such as rock lobster, freshwater crayfish and seahorses would be developed.

And it says aquaculture could help ease a possible shortage of jobs when wild fisheries are reduced in size.

This would be likely to happen in coastal areas where employment options were not wide.

But to achieve the ambitious plan, the industry says that confusing legislation and a weakness in property rights must be addressed.

Because water-based farming is a relatively new industry, it does not have an all-embracing legislative framework.

Instead, it has 14 overlapping laws governing coastal marine area and aquaculture.

The situation was not lost on Mr Hodgson, who told the conference that aquaculture reform was proving to be hard.

"They've identified the barriers to their rapid growth path," he said.

"I should acknowledge that until we've sorted aquaculture law reform, I'm one of those barriers.

"The vision document is impressive."

Mr Hodgson said movement on aquaculture reform had gone ahead in fits and starts.

But a way forward had almost been hit on, and a plan would go to stakeholders shortly for assessment.

He said a sustainable approach would be adopted in all parts of aquatic law.

"It's my view that as the world's tariff structures are slowly negotiated away, the new trade barriers will be environmental in nature.

"If our products can clear these non-tariff trade barriers and the products of other nations cannot, then environmental standards will earn this industry serious money."

The peaks and troughs of aquaculture legislation have recently been exposed in a long-running court case relating to the Tasman District Council's provision within its resource management plan for water-based farming.

It resulted in an Environment Court interim decision last week that allowed for expansion of farming, but limited its scale and its future locations.

Arguments for and against the industry's development often provoke heated debate.

The Aquaculture Council says it could achieve earnings of $1 billion by using 17,000ha of aquaculture farms in a variety of locations.

That equates to 10 per cent of the Marlborough Sounds, 9 per cent of Molesworth Station, or a third of Lake Taupo.