WorldFish and Odisha State join efforts to scale-up aquaculture

WorldFish and the Government of Odisha, India, have settled an agreement to sustainably boost aquaculture in the state by increasing productivity through improvements in seed, technology and farming systems.

The partnership will also focus on improving the value chain for aquaculture products in Odisha with a view to having an impact on human nutrition where over 25 per cent of children under five in rural parts of the state suffer from acute malnutrition.

“We have been working in neighbouring Bangladesh for many years and have had great success in scaling-up production with new technologies and training. We are honored to be working with the State of Odisha look forward to bringing some of that expertise to bear in the state in the coming years,” pointed out WorldFish aquaculture programme leader Michael Phillips.

For his part, Bishnupada Sethi, IAS Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Fisheries & Animal Resources Department, stressed “Odisha offers vast scope for development in fisheries sector and we look forward to an integrated development in collaboration with WorldFish’’.

The collaboration will be for a period of five years commencing from July, 2016.

Odisha State working with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a division of the World Bank Group, identified the fisheries sector as a potential area for future investment. The State drafted a comprehensive Fishery Policy and selected WorldFish as partner to assist in the realization of the aquaculture segment of that document.

An additional focus of the partnership will be on improving the planning and management of existing resources (particularly coastal areas, and inland wetlands) for aquaculture and fisheries, with due reference to maintaining or improving the social and ecological resilience of natural resources and the people dependent on this resources