USMSFP - U.S. Marine Shrimp Farming Program

The Detroit Free Press today features a story about Michigan shrimp farmer Russ Allen, who says he wants to build an environmentally friendly bio-secure commercial shrimp farm. See article below:

OKEMOS -- Farmer Russ Allen aims his flashlight into a shallow tank and illuminates scores of 5-inch swimming critters with beady eyes, waving antennae and multiple legs -- future shrimp dinners.

Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, you can buy them fresh next door in his tiny shrimp-farm market, the state's first, and cook 'em up at home.

" Word is getting around, but people are still surprised when they stop in," he says of the shop attached to his Seafood Systems Inc. research center and pilot shrimp farm.

The market, open since October, is almost incidental to his ultimate goal: to build an environmentally friendly, bio-secure commercial shrimp farm in Michigan, a project he says would spawn a new industry in the state, creating both production and processing jobs and generating about $5 million annually in its initial phase. In five years, he says, expansions could increase sales to $50 million to $75 million a year.

It would be the first commercially producing indoor shrimp farm in the world, says Allen, 56, who has built, run and consulted for shrimp farms all over the globe. An Adrian native and University of Michigan graduate, he returned here from Belize, in Latin America, in 1990 to raise his family "where my roots are," he says.

In Okemos, he has invested more than $2 million of private capital and worked for 11 years on his proprietary indoor saltwater farming techniques, including five years testing them in his barn-size commercial pilot farm. Now, he says, he's ready to build the full-scale commercial facility.

But he is finding it may be easier to grow crustaceans in the middle of Michigan than it is to get state-backed grants or low-interest loans to take the next steps and launch the plant.

" All these grant programs are aimed at the auto industry, the high tech industry, the health care industry, and yet there's nothing that allows agriculture, or specifically aquaculture and shrimp, to qualify," he says.

Partly as a result, the first facility using his technology is likely to open in New Jersey, but he says he is determined to build an inland shrimp industry in Michigan.

" If you're not a contributor and you're not a lobbyist, nobody pays any attention to you," he says in frustration. "Hey, we're aquaculturists -- we don't have lobbyists."

So a couple of weeks ago, he was back in Lansing, handing out samples of Michigan shrimp cocktail and telling his story -- and the shrimp's -- to any legislator willing to listen.

He makes a strong case for the potential of a food whose availability and popularity have grown dramatically. According to the Commerce Department, shrimp passed tuna as America's most-consumed seafood in 2001 and sales are still climbing. From 1995 to 2003 -- as foreign imports grew, pushing prices down -- annual U.S. shrimp consumption leaped from 2.5 pounds to 4 pounds per person. American Gulf Coast shrimpers catch only about 10 percent of U.S. demand, according to Anthony Ostrowski, director of the U.S. Marine Shrimp Farming Program in Hawaii. Only about 1 percent comes from U.S. shrimp farms, which last year produced 12.5 million pounds, he said.

In contrast, the United States imported 1.04 billion pounds last year, valued at $3.7 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Allen says he can meet the growing demand for shrimp and keep the cost low. Using a special feed he's helped develop, he says he can grow shrimp commercially for 70 cents a pound, making it competitive with chicken.

" If it works, it will just be fabulous for the shrimp industry in the United States," says Bob Rosenberry, editor and publisher of Shrimp News International in San Diego. "Here's what it means. It's an environmentally friendly way of growing shrimp. It's bio-secure; there are no disease factors. The shrimp is clean and chemical-free, and it can be supplied from within the United States." Says Allen: "I wanted a system that didn't have any effluence out of it, and that you could locate anywhere." "I guess here in Okemos would be a great example of anywhere," he says. And the discharge problem was solved by using recirculating water. He says the pilot farm uses less water per year than an average house.

Ultimately, he wants to use underground saltwater, though, rather than making it in-house with fresh water and aquarium salts. The indoor system had to be able to compete economically with cheap outdoor ponds. The pilot shows it will be, he says. Exactly how it works is a trade secret, which the Free Press agreed not to describe in exchange for being able to see and tour it.

Ostrowski, of the Marine Shrimp Farming program, says no commercial farms now operating are completely indoors, although many people are trying to develop a financially feasible indoor system. Economics is the problem, he agrees, especially as wholesale shrimp prices continue to fall because of foreign imports.

In the refrigerated display case in Allen's shrimp-farm market one afternoon recently, shrimp were priced at $6.50 to $11 per pound, depending on size and source. Some are his own and some are from the farm in Texas that supplies his larvae, because his pilot facility is still primarily for research.

Sometime in the future -- before long, he hopes -- he envisions a string of fresh shrimp markets throughout metro Detroit, where shoppers can buy pounds and pounds of something they've probably never dreamed of: homegrown Michigan shrimp.

Seafood Systems Inc. and its shrimp-farm market are at 3450 Meridian Road, Okemos. Call 517-347-4999 for information. Contact SYLVIA RECTOR at 313-222-5026 or rector@freepress.com.