Aquaculture producers face numerous production risks throughout the year. The National Risk Management Feasibility Program for Aquaculture (NRMFPA) is investigating the feasibility of developing instruments—including insurance—to reduce farm-level production risks for producers of catfish, salmon, trout, and baitfish.

 If you produce catfish, trout, or baitfish you can assist in this effort. A National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) enumerator may contact you in July or August. The NRMFPA, in collaboration with NASS, is conducting a survey to collect risk-related information. We request your participation in this survey since it will be one of the only methods the NRMFPA has to collect data for evaluating the feasibility of insurance and/or other risk protection products for the U.S. aquaculture industry.

For more information about the NRMFPA, please review the article below. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

The NRMFPA Group

Nationwide Survey to Explore Risk Protection for Aquaculture Producers 

 Fish diseases, bird predation, toxic algae, power outages, oxygen depletion, pesticides, interruption in water flow, floods, drought, earthquakes and volcanoes are perils of significant economic concern to aquaculture production. The risk of losing fish from several of the above perils can be reduced through a combination of farm management practices but none of these perils can be completely prevented. They expose producers to the possibility of unexpected production losses and potential financial losses.

The National Risk Management Feasibility Program for Aquaculture (NRMFPA) was created in 2001 as a partnership program between the USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA) and Mississippi State University to investigate the feasibility of developing risk-reducing products such as peril specific production loss insurance for the four highest-valued aquaculture industries (catfish, salmon, trout, and baitfish, as of 1999). To accomplish this goal the NRMFPA must collect the frequency and magnitude of production loss events on a farm level. In addition, key elements such as risk classification factors must be identified. Specific historical information on loss events and risk management practices do not exist for any of the aquaculture industries, which presents additional challenges to developing appropriate risk protection products.

The NRMFPA, in collaboration with the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), is conducting an aquaculture survey endorsed by the Catfish Farmers of America, the U.S. Trout Farmers Association, and the Arkansas Bait and Ornamental Fish Growers Association. Over 1,900 catfish, trout, and baitfish producers will be contacted during the summer of 2005 and asked to report on historical production losses, anticipated future losses, and other subjects essential to developing sound, appropriate insurance policies. These surveys will serve as a key component in determining if production loss insurance for catfish, baitfish, and trout can be offered through the RMA. In addition, the results from the survey will identify practices that reduce the risk of losses on the farm, which will immediately benefit these aquaculture industries.

For more information about the NRMFPA and RMA please access their respective websites at: http://www.agecon.msstate.edu/aquaculture and http://www.rma.usda.gov. If you have any questions regarding the NRMFPA or the survey please contact Terry Hanson, hanson@agecon.msstate.edu or Steve Sempier, sempier@agecon.msstate.edu, National Risk Management Feasibility Program for Aquaculture, Mississippi State University, Department of Agricultural Economics.