Page 34 - FAO Aquaculture News, May 2021 - No. 63

FAO Supported Investigation of COVID-19

Impacts on Aquaculture in China

©Freshwater Fisheries Research Center

Field staff interviewing channel catfish farmer.

he COVID-19 pandemic has seriously impacted
Tthe overall agriculture sector and the stakeholders FFRC investigation team:
along the value chain since its outbreak. FAO has taken Yuan Yongming, Director, Center for
actions to support its Members to effectively address the Information and Economics (CIE)
impact of the pandemic, including assessing the specific Yuan Yuan, Research Fellow, CIE
damages to the sector and recommending an appropriate Dai Yunyun, Research Fellow, CIE
strategy and actions to mitigate the impact and speed up
the post-pandemic recovery of the sector. Largely due to
the features of the aquaculture sector in China, notably a lockdown of Wuhan City and the nationwide restriction
heavy dependence on distant markets and external inputs of public transportation, personal travel and shutdown of
(e.g. imported), the damage to the aquaculture sector markets for fresh and live agricultural products and related
caused by the pandemic is more severe than in other food service sectors. These measures impacted production
production sectors. and marketing of aquaculture products and the related
supporting sector in China much earlier than the rest of
China is the largest producer of aquaculture products, the world.
contributing 52 percent of the global production. As a well-
established market-oriented sector, Chinese aquaculture In order to understand the impact of COVID-19 on the
depends heavily on the normal functioning of all the entire aquaculture value chain and what strategy and
links along the value chain. After the first identification measures have been taken to support the stakeholders to
of COVID-19 in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, address the impact of the pandemic on the sector, FAO
containment measures were soon enforced to prevent supported the Freshwater Fisheries Research Centre
the spread of the epidemic, including the complete (FFRC) in carrying out a preliminary investigation.
The investigation focused on channel catfish (Ictalurus
punctatus) farming in Hubei Province and tilapia farming
Written by: (Oreochromis spp.) in Guangdong Province. It was
Weimin Miao expected the investigation would provide good information
E-mail: Weimin.Miao@fao.org for FAO and its Members to better understand the impact
FAO Fisheries Division, Rome, Italy
of the pandemic on aquaculture with a view to developing

FAO AQUACULTURE NEWS – Nº. 63 ■ MAY 2021 33