Prawn farmers lose out in fight against pollution

Prawn farmers lose out in fight against pollution

By Sri Wahyuni

TEGAL, Central Java (JP): Local fishpond farmers can now only
reminisce about the days when breeding scampi was a lucrative
business that they thought could last forever.

Today, pollution and drought are the greatest obstacles in the
survival of the business.

"For three, 0.6 hectare ponds, I used to make a net profit of
Rp 100 million (US$50,000) in a single harvest," a farmer said of
his success in the early 1990s, the golden years of the then
promising export commodity.

His success encouraged others to try their luck in the
business. Hundreds of hectares of fishponds and dry land were
converted into prawn ponds, but have now ended in failure.

Sukrad, 58, a farmer in Muarareja village in Tegal
municipality, was among those who failed. He began breeding
prawns in 1994 but gave up two years later due to bankruptcy.

"I had only four harvests, and none of them gave me
significant profit," said Sukrad, who is also the village chief.
He lost Rp 30 million in bank loans and another Rp 70 million
which he raised by selling a piece of his land.

"I haven't finished repaying my debt even now," he said.

Local farmers said business declined because the ponds were
polluted and were no longer suitable for growing prawns.

They blamed a developer of a housing complex that allegedly
reclaimed land using garbage, waste from salted-fish home
industries and from a nearby ice factory.

Based on farmers' complaint, the local fishery office recently
examined the water quality.

"(Pollution) of the water has not reached a toxic level," said
head of the municipality's Fishery Service Office Samtoro Putro.
He did elaborate.

The farmers, of course, had different opinions. They said that
even the lowest level of pollution in the water could "stress"
prawns and make them sick.

"Taking care of a human baby would be much easier than taking
care of prawns," said one farmer.

This explains why once a prawn was found floating dead in the
water farmers would harvest the whole pond, no matter how small
the prawns were, to prevent further financial loss.

"Prawns are cannibals. They eat the dead ones. Then they
easily catch the same disease," another farmer explained.

Unavoidable

Samtoro, however, said there was nothing anybody could do.

He said the Tegal municipality had been established as a fish
catching, not fish breeding, region. Some processes such as
drying and salting the fish unavoidably caused pollution.

There are about 500 hectares of fishponds in the municipality,
half of them located in Muarareja where almost 600 farmers breed
either fish or scampi. The rest are scattered in the villages of
Tegalsari, Panggung and Mintaraga.

The official conceded there had been a sharp decline in the
municipality's prawn production over the past few years. In 1995,
for example, the municipality produced nearly 100 tons of prawns,
harvested from about 100 hectares of ponds still used to farm
scampi. In 1996, the figure dropped by half.

In the early 1990s, a one-hectare pond could yield three tons
of "super-size" scampi, also known as size 30 because a kilogram
consists of 30 prawns.

"The total production this year will certainly be less than
last year," Samtoro said.

The same problem occurred in the Tegal regency, which now has
300 hectares of ponds and is expected to only generate Rp 1
billion from the scampi business.

Munir, a farmer from Kramat district, recalled how scampi
farming used to be an easy job. "All you had to do was throw the
baby prawns into the water. The rest would be just waiting until
harvest time," he said.

In the heyday of scampi farming, it would only take 100 days
for baby prawns to grow into super-size scampi. Now, farmers
consider themselves lucky if they can harvest size 60 prawns in
the same period. Even size 60 prawns need additional vitamins,
antiviruses and the water must be chemically treated.

"During the golden days of the business, the regency could
contribute three times as much to the national income," said
Slamet Sophan, the head of the production section of the
regency's fishery office.

He said one reason was the soil's declining fertility, after
more than 10 years of cultivation.

One solution, he said, was to plant less baby prawns in a
pond. Another was to breed fish and prawns alternately.

Another reason for the predicted decline in prawn production
was the drought. Hundreds of hectares of ponds in the region have
either dried up or are severely lacking fresh water.

The hardest hit are the districts of Suradadi, Kramat,
Warureja and West Tegal, the traditional major fish and prawn
producing areas.

Farmers with more than two ponds, each usually about half a
hectare and the necessary equipment such as diesel pumps, could
usually overcome the difficulty. Those with enough capital could
take another option, namely find ponds in other, more fertile
areas such as the southern coastal districts of Klirong, Ayah and
Buayan, in Kebumen regency, about 200 kilometers away.

Those who don't, will have to wait until the rain comes.