Digital transformation in aquaculture

In addition to this, we should consider the generational succession in the production positions of many aquaculture farms, where the average age of managers and operators is currently between 45 and 50 years. So we can assume that the adoption of digital apps and IT technologies in management and data analysis will be deficient and expensive for the time being. 

The phenomenon of digital transformation in aquaculture appears to be a process much more related to cultural barriers, paradigms, and rejection and fear of change rather than to the actual usage of information technologies. 

In the year of 2018, while I visited AquaExpo Guayaquil in Ecuador, I observed a tendency among the most prominent companies that took part in the commercial exhibit. Most of them were feed manufacturers and providers, and they had as a common objective for this exhibition to promote their digital apps for data optimization in shrimp farming. This marketing focus was more prominent than the one oriented towards their products and services. 

Some of these companies had their full team of software developers and designers in their booths. Many of them brought in from their different corporate headquarters in faraway countries. The objective was to provide specialized digital consultancy to farmers to “digitalize” them and their businesses. 

Potential customers for these digital developments observed with disbelief the promised features of those apps and technological advancements, paying attention to the onsite demonstrations with a certain degree of disdain, even. The system functionalities to introduce data from the shrimp farming operations and the developed algorithms that allowed analyzing data in an “easier” way seemed pretty foreign to producers. 

Last year instead (2019), back in Guayaquil at the annual AquaExpo event, I realized that the exhibition booths of these aquaculture feed companies no longer had information related to digital apps and technologies. There were no more giant phone screens showing the way the systems can be used for data management in aquaculture farming. 

There were also no more software developers and foreign engineers explaining to aquaculturists how and why they should use these digital tools. Nobody was talking about that anymore. That year the attention was focused on the feed. Nobody was talking anymore about information technologies and software development to make the aquaculture farming process more efficient and predictable. 

So I wonder what happened? What caused this sudden change of direction in the marketing efforts of those companies? What happened to all the investments made last year in the development and promotion of these digital platforms for aquaculture management? 

It is not hard to imagine that in the attempt of proposing and developing a different way to execute processes within the aquaculture industry, these companies have had to reconsider new strategies to bring on the digital transformation to this industry efficiently and objectively. 

Anyone who has tried to bring new ideas into the aquaculture industry knows well barriers that have to be faced to succeed. It seems like every producer has developed their manual and their know-how. Every operations manager has a different way of coming to the expected result. And even, sometimes, it is not easy for them to explain how something was done since there is no documentation to back up the trials. Usually, there are no many systematized manuals across the industry. 

This situation makes digital transformation for productive processes harder and, at the same time, becomes a personal competition between the technician who has developed the process versus the app that will execute it faster, more precisely, and with continual improvement.  

In addition to this, we should consider the generational succession in the production positions of many aquaculture farms, where the average age of managers and operators is currently between 45 and 50 years. So we can assume that the adoption of digital apps and IT technologies in management and data analysis will be deficient and expensive for the time being. 

Nonetheless, digital transformation is here to stay. It is pretty much impossible to imagine a world now without the help and support of digital apps and our smartphones. But beyond those quotidian services, digital transformation could indeed help the aquaculture industry to be much safer in terms of sanitary risks, by allowing faster and remote diagnosis of diseases to implement precise and effective treatments promptly. 

Digital transformation could also allow aquaculture producers and managers always to have real-time information from the farms and, in this way, support decision making in production and sales based upon production costs, logistics, and status of the production process. 

With digital transformation, aquaculture will grow; it will standardize processes, reduce costs and risks, and become a predictable and replicable activity that will bring employment and wealth. It is only a matter of figuring out the paradigms and fears that are preventing the current generation of producers and technicians from implementing information technologies into aquaculture. An age that is also beginning to be replaced.

Salvador Meza. Editor & Publisher of Aquaculture Magazine and Panorama Acuicola Magazine.