9. The Secretariat expressed the need to determine the present state of aquaculture in the region in order to gauge the motivation of countries to establish a cooperation network. There was thus a brief presentation on the state of aquaculture and its contribution to economic and social development, food production, generation of employment and income, reduction of rural migration and alleviation of poverty in the region. The main problems affecting the development of aquaculture were identified.
10. Aquaculture production in the region had amounted to 1 168 million tonnes in 2002, with an approximate value of US$3 795 million. The annual aquaculture growth rate had been 14.4 percent during the past decade, but had averaged nearly 24.5 percent since 1970. The region's aquaculture growth rate was one of the highest and most consistent in the world.
11. The Secretariat also reported that key aquaculture developments in the past decade included spectacular growth of salmon farming in Chile, significant development of shrimp culture in various countries of the region, particularly Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, regular use of water reservoirs for aquaculture, a change in approach to the development of rural aquaculture, and progress in the culturing of various species of fish, crustaceans, molluscs, algae and other aquatic organisms. Each of these sectors presented specific problems intrinsic to the farming technology and cultured species.
12. It was stressed that the main problems affecting the development of aquaculture in the region were disease, feed and nutrition, genetics, breeding, culture technologies, introduction of species, processing, conservation, and marketing of aquaculture products, which affected the safety and biosecurity of products and thus the end consumers, and the environmental impact of aquaculture.
13. External problems seriously affecting aquaculture performance include restrictive macroeconomic policies that tended to reduce funds available to public institutions. In practical terms, such measures reduced the level of human resources in the state structure and scientific institutions that supported the development of sectors such as aquaculture.
14. The participants agreed that the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean needed to continue developing regional cooperation to deal with all these problems, particularly the planning of aquaculture development, achieving a reasonable balance between industrial aquaculture and small-scale or rural aquaculture, research and development activities, training, technical assistance and extension, regulations and institutional structures.
National Aquaculture Sector Overview (NASO)
15. The participants were informed of and invited to contribute to the NASO initiative launched by FAO's Inland Water Resources and Aquaculture Service (FIRI). They were also invited to contribute to national and regional overviews of aquaculture development trends. Countries were encouraged to produce country overviews of their respective aquaculture sector as a contribution to the regional overview. A new letter of agreement (LoA) would be drawn up between FIRI and OSPESCA so that OSPESCA could compile the overviews. FIRI would shortly provide OSPESCA with the structure, content and format of country and regional overviews needed to produce a synthesis of aquaculture development in Latin America. The Secretariat reported that it had held further discussions with OSPESCA on the drafting of the LoA. The deadline for submission of the overviews was July 2005. The expert from Mexico stressed the importance of the NASO initiative for the sharing of information for aquaculture development among the countries in the region.
