James Fisher
Farmers could soon be growing prawns in their fields in a bid to diversify income streams, according to a pioneering research project. The UK Sustainable King Prawn Project (UKSKPP), conducted by the University of Exeter, showed that king-prawn aquaculture could have benefits not only for the UK seafood industry, but for farmers and landowners.
King prawns (Penaeus vannamei) are one of the ‘big five’ seafoods eaten in the UK, alongside cod, haddock, salmon and tuna, but the majority — an astonishing 28,000 tons — is imported annually, typically from South East Asian producers, some of which have questionable ecological credentials. King prawns produced in Britain, by contrast, could potentially be grown in recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS), co-located with sustainable heat sources, such as anaerobic digesters, and offer a low carbon footprint, alongside exceptional freshness for the consumer, as well as new employment opportunities.
The University of Exeter’s Prof Rod Wilson, UKSKPP lead, believes that to keep the UK population fed, at the same time as reversing biodiversity loss, ‘sustainable aquaculture has to be a major part of food production’, but he states that expert assistance will be needed for start-ups or franchises brought in to run prawn enterprises on farmland.
His Exeter colleague, Prof Ian Bateman, states that struggling farms could diversify profitably into both king-prawn and fish production via RAS. ‘The challenge is the substantial initial setup (capital) costs,’ but there is a potential win for the Government, which, he adds, could reduce its funding of public goods schemes that ‘are not particularly effective’, such as biodiversity restoration, and instead ‘could approach farmers who would really benefit from diversification and its financial stability as it offers to fund start-up costs. RAS also needs very little land to produce huge amounts of food. A one-hectare RAS facility would immediately be one of the largest in the country — and yet it would produce the same amount of food as 50 hectares of prime livestock land’.
The UKSKPP (also run with the University of Reading and Rothamsted Research) was set up in 2022 and will run until March 2026. It has established a demonstrator farm site near St Andrews in Fife, Scotland, with production sold through Eden Valley Prawns, currently the UK’s only commercial land-based king-prawn farm. The team is liaising with government and industry to address barriers, such as the reliance on imported larvae and the lack of a skilled workforce.
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