Aquaculture Production and Consumption of Fish in India

Abstract

Aquaculture and fisheries emerged as an important source of food, protein, nutrition, livelihood and employment for the majority of the rural population. The fisheries sector has registered a sustainable and astounding growth rate over the last decade. The sector offers an attractive and promising future for employment, livelihood and food security. The study is based on the available secondary data from different aspects of fishery statistics published in Handbook on Fisheries Statistics 2020 by the Government of India and other related articles. Data for the time series analysis was taken from 2001-02 to 2017-18. It is found that the world per capita apparent consumption of fish has been increased by 10.4 kg from the 1960s (i.e., 9.9 kg) to 2016 (i.e., 20.30 kg). By analysing the time-series data, it is evident that the total fish production, including both marines and inland, has shown an astounding growth with a Compound Growth Rate of 4.58. The regression equation was Y = 5.182X – 12267, R2 value was 0.9414 where Y is the total fish production (dependent variable) and X is the total fish seed production (independent variable). There exists a positive relationship between fish seed and fish production in the country. It can be concluded that aquaculture plays a significant role in the country’s GDP rate and food security.