Delaware's Handwerker has a jumbo idea for
Just Shrimp

Farming is big business in southern Delaware, where corn, soybeans and chickens line the landscape.
Count Thomas Handwerker among Delaware's growers. But Handwerker is cultivating a different crop amid the cornfields that surround his five acres south of Laurel.
He's growing shrimp. And Handwerker is hoping to grow a new industry that he thinks will take root on the Delmarva Peninsula.
For about a year, Handwerker and his Just Shrimp company off U.S. 13 have been hard at work growing microscopic creatures into delicacies. The animals are grown in large tanks, roughly half the size of a football field, in a controlled setting known as aquaculture, a process of farming that is still emerging in Delaware.
Just like growing the aquatic animals, Handwerker and a group of investors also have been trying to grow interest in their business.
Handwerker wants to attract associate growers, just as the poultry companies use contract farmers, to help the budding company meet demand for live shrimp. The shrimp are especially popular in Asian-American markets in big cities such as Philadelphia and New York.
Already, he has has lined up three growers locally -- some of whom are chicken farmers, too. The company would like to eventually have as many as 80 growers.
It's a business that Handwerker said has possibilities as endless as the ocean.
"We're introducing a new generation of farming," said Handwerker, an aquaculture scientist from Salisbury, Md., who is chief executive officer of the company that began growing shrimp last summer, and is already selling to shrimp brokers in Philadelphia. "What we're trying to do is to diversify the market."
The company is targeting the live shrimp markets in metropolitan areas such as Philadelphia, New York, Washington and Baltimore. The hope is, Handwerker said, to produce a high volume of quality live shrimp within a few hours of nearly a quarter of the nation's population.
The company is a first-of-its-kind operation for Delaware, in which marine Pacific white shrimp are grown in large freshwater tanks in a 12,000-square-foot greenhouse. Marine shrimp usually are grown in the wild or in captivity in salt water, but can be acclimated to a freshwater environment.
Growing shrimp in fresh water presents a number of advantages, Handwerker said. It helps the shrimp fend off disease, allows growers to avoid regulatory problems that come with saltwater discharge, and it reduces the cost of having to make salt water.
Department of Agriculture Secretary Michael Scuse said he welcomes the shrimp farm, and he believes it has potential to add to Delaware's roughly $800 million agriculture production industry.
"This is going to allow us even further diversification here in Delaware," Scuse said.
Handwerker sees similarities in the poultry industry and what he's trying to do at his shrimp farm, where as many as 40 million of the shellfish will be grown in a year.
And he said Delaware is a great place to try this, because fresh groundwater supplies are abundant, the state is within a few hours of major cities where shrimp are in demand, and there is an established farming community.
Just Shrimp wants to create a network of a farmers to grow the shrimp, while Just Shrimp would handle the hatchery and transportation aspects of the business. Poultry growers are ideal for this, Handwerker said. They have experience in managing flocks and have the basis for setting up their own shrimp farms -- old chicken houses that could be converted into tank houses.
Dean Smith, a Delmar farmer, is converting a 35-year-old, outdated chicken house outside Laurel to house three giant tanks where he could grow some 250,000 shrimp in 84-degree water at any given time. Handwerker said the startup costs for converting the old houses and then start growing shrimp can range from $40,000 to $50,000.
Smith decided to give shrimping a try after more than 25 years of growing chickens. He said market volatility and fluctuations in weather can make traditional farming difficult.
" I've seen too many years when I've had only chickens and no crops" because of drought or heat, Smith said. "You've got to diversify."
He's hopeful his shrimping operation will turn a profit of $30,000 to $40,000 in his first year.
" It could be lucrative," Smith said.
Aquaculture experts said the idea could turn profitable, since Just Shrimp is trying to tap a niche market by supplying Asian-American restaurants and markets with live shrimp. Handwerker says the company and its growers will produce shrimp over a 13-week period, in which the animals will grow to about 5 inches in length and sell for about $5.50 a pound.
Most shrimp in the United States is imported -- some 1.5 billion pounds of it alone in 2003, the most recent year for which figures are available, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Another 195 million pounds is caught in this country.
But just about all of it is processed and frozen.
Live shrimp farming is steadily on the rise, growing from about 2.2 million pounds in 1997 to 9 million pounds in 2002, according to NOAA.
Michael Rubino, manager of NOAA's aquaculture program, said for an enterprise to succeed, there has to be a good management strategy and a plan to meet a niche need -- like supplying the live markets in nearby cities.
" That's a great strategy," Rubino said.
Jim Tidwell, of Kentucky State University, said Just Shrimp could serve as an important model for other businesses that want to grow shrimp in a freshwater environment, and maybe bring in associate growers to help with the venture.
There are fewer than 100 shrimp farms in the United States, Tidwell said, and most of those are in Texas and are based in saltwater ponds.
But whether Handwerker's business model is economically doable, Tidwell said "that's still the question I think a lot of people are trying to figure out."
Handwerker pointed to the tilapia market nearly 20 years ago, when there was less than 100,000 pounds of the fish in demand in a year in New York City. Today, that figure is closer to a million pounds a month, Handwerker said.
"We see the same market development here," he said.

Source:
By CHIP GUY / The News Journal
http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050731/BUSINESS/507310330/1003