New law paves the way for Brazil to quintuple production of farmed fish

The recent approval of the provisional measure of public goods (MP 915/19) validated by the Senate and converted into Law 14.011/20, has everything to change the level of fish farming in Brazil, a sector that last year produced 758 thousand tons of farmed fish and recorded a Gross Production Value (VBP) of BRL 6 billion.

One of the changes is that the MP facilitates the process of costly assignment of Union waters for fish farming. “It is a new frontier that opens up and will enable an increase in production of 3 million tons per year and an increase in the VBP of fish farming to BRL 18 million [in the same period]”, says Francisco Medeiros, president of the Brazilian Association of Fish farming (Peixe BR).

In fish farming, Law 14.011/20 facilitated procedures for assessing requests from entrepreneurs interested in growing fish in Union waters, especially in hydroelectric ponds. Before the measure, the process took between seven to ten years.

“We have reduced the bureaucracy and digitalized the process so that interested parties can do everything from their home without the need to go to a Federal Superintendence of Agriculture”, says Jorge Seif Júnior, secretary of Aquaculture and Fisheries at the Ministry of Agriculture. “We are working on expanding the sale of these water bodies to produce fish. There is no point in having so many hydroelectric plants without growing anything ”, he adds.

According to the latest report by the United Nations Organization for Agriculture (FAO) on aquaculture (cultivation of aquatic organisms under controlled conditions) and fishing, the trend in the world for the coming years is an increase in farmed fish and a decrease in extractive fishing by because of environmental limits.