Shrimp farming on the Prairies
New venture near Strathmore to grow local seafood
Thousands of miles from the nearest ocean, Strathmore, Alberta is the last place anyone would expect to find a local source of sustainable seafood.
But this corner of cattle country, bestknown for its feedlots and livestock auctions, is taking on a decidedly “surf and turf” flavour. Waterford Farms — a 9,000 squarefoot facility located in Wheatland County, just east of Strathmore — is the first largescale commercial shrimp growing operation in Alberta, and proponents say it could be a model for a new type of agricultural business on the Prairies.
The inland shrimp farm uses a recirculating aquaculture system to raise the marine animals in vertically stacked saltwater tanks. Waterford Farms buys the “post-larvae,” or shrimp babies, from a supplier in Texas and then houses and feeds them for 20 weeks until they have grown from the size of an eyelash to the size of an open hand and are ready to be sold to a restaurant or supermarket.
The facility has had shrimp on site since January 1 and expects to make its first harvest this month. The goal is to produce 2.5 million individual shrimp, or 100,000 pounds, per year, said Waterford Farms owner Keith Driver.
Driver, a 43-year-old environmental engineer from Calgary, said most of the shrimp currently consumed in Canada is shipped in from Thailand, India, China and Vietnam. He said he believes there is a growing market for shrimp produced at home, in an ethically and environmentally sustainable way.
“The future of food is sustainable production . . . we can’t keep harvesting the oceans the way we have,” Driver said. “And the majority of the shrimp we eat in Canada now does not have a great carbon footprint.”
Waterford Farms’ shrimp are raised without any need for antibiotics, hormones or pesticides, all in a controlled, protected environment. Driver, who grew up in Toronto and calls himself “the most unlikely farmer in the world,” said the high-tech water circulation system at Waterford Farms requires careful management and is the most challenging part about raising shrimp inland.
“It’s a skill and it’s not the skill people think it is. It’s not an animal rearing skill,” Driver said. “Aquaculture is a water treatment game, it’s not a fish game.”
Farming inland shrimp in Canada is still relatively unusual, but there is growing interest in the field. In the last several years, a handful of commercial-scale ventures have popped up across the country — including Planet Shrimp near London, Ontario and Berezan Shrimp Company in Vancouver.
Diego Ibarra — an instructor in the Department of Biology at Dalhousie University — said Canada has been slow to catch onto the aquaculture trend, perhaps because we have a strong fisheries industry that has overshadowed more innovative pursuits.
“Other countries have been ramping up production long before Canada, but now I think it’s catching on here,” Ibarra said.
Farming shrimp inland has its own environmental impacts, Ibarra said, including the large amounts of salt and water required and the sustainability concerns around the volumes of fish feed required for aquaculture.
Still, he said these impacts pale in comparison to the environmental price tag that comes with harvesting shrimp in Thailand and shipping it around the world. He added doing aquaculture on the Prairies also minimizes the chance that an unwelcome virus could spread from a fish farm to the ocean.
“When you’re doing seawater farming in a place where there’s no sea, it’s a lot safer,” Ibarra said. “I think it’s a great idea.”
Ranjan Pradhan, president of Shrimp Canada — an Ontario start-up whose goal is to make inland shrimp production self-sustainable in that province — said there’s no reason why Alberta couldn’t have a strong seafood farming industry.
“You have greenhouses, so how is that any different?” Pradhan said. “It will be slow, but it is going to grow. People are getting familiar with the idea of local produce and are concerned about quality. There is very strong potential, that’s for sure.”
Waterford Farms held its grand opening on Wednesday. It is the second large-scale fish farm to open in the Calgary area in recent months. In late December, Deepwater Farms became the city’s first commercial aquaponics facility, raising leafy greens and freshwater fish such as sea bass in a warehouse-like facility.