farm fresh fish

by Pat Petzel

Americans are consuming more fish than ever. The U.S. Economic Research Service said on average, we are eating four pounds more fish per year than we were in the 1970s. Fish offer nutritional benefits -- they are high in protein, low in saturated fat and they contain many other nutrients that are important for proper growth and development, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

With a higher demand, fish farmers are working to meet the supply. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, ocean fish stock is currently fished at or beyond capacity, and the Great Lakes are also threatened from overfishing. Just as livestock farmers raise cattle, hogs, poultry and lambs, fish farmers are raising domestic fish. The premise of animal agriculture is that by raising and breeding food animals domestically, the animals' nutrition, environment and breeding can be better controlled in order to supply consumers with high-quality, consistent food. Domesticated fish are raised and marketed under that principle, too, and fish farmers boast the same bragging rights as livestock farmers - the meat from their fish is higher quality and tastier than wild-caught fish, they say. And why shouldn't it be? Farm fish eat high-protein feed, they are kept in tanks that provide continuously filtered and oxygenated water and their health and well being is closely monitored.

"The people who are successful in aquaculture are farmers, because aquaculture is farming," said Laura Tiu, senior research associate at the Ohio State University ’s South Centers. Aquaculture is not like the many exotic animals that periodically become trendy on Ohio farms. "A lot of people think aquaculture is new, " she said. "It’s not new, but it's underdeveloped."

David Smith and his wife, Carol, are truly fish farmers, raising rainbow trout, yellow perch and shrimp, among other species, at their Freshwater Farms of Ohio in Champaign County. Whereas most people who raise fish in Ohio sell them for stocking ponds, rivers and lakes, the Smiths market their smoked fish, fresh trout and perch directly through a retail store at their farm and to area restaurants. What is really unusual about the Smith farm is that the operation runs year-round because all of the trout are raised indoors.

Smith has more than a little experience with fish; he has three degrees in related fields, including a doctorate in fish nutrition. He studied marine science at Louisiana State University where he worked with saltwater shrimp in the bayous. But he knew there was potential for making a living with fish back home in Ohio . "It never made sense to me that people were trying to use coastal areas to raise fish, particularly if they were using wetlands," he said. "So I decided the way to expand was in freshwater because you could get land -- coast land is so expensive."

So in 1986, the Smiths started raising and selling fish at a refurbished poultry farm near Urbana . They talked to chefs and figured out how they could process the fish so that restaurants could best prepare the trout. They now sell wholesale to restaurants in Dayton and Columbus . The family business has also been expanded to include Dave's parents as well.

Another part of the Smith operation that is unusual is that the family owns it's own processing plant in West Liberty . This enables them to process and package the smoked trout in retail gift baskets they sell both at their farm and through mail order.

Fish as livestock

Trout have been raised domestically for over 100 years, and Dave calls them "the most domesticated fish there is." What's that mean? Basically that the fish work and play well with other fish, so to speak. Fish have to be taught to eat pelleted feed. Dave said that if he were to bring in young perch from the wild, 90 percent would starve. "They are used to live feed and won't convert (to pelleted feed)" he said. "Through selective breeding we choose fish that are more docile and adaptable to domestication. Our perch are about five generations away from being wild."

Strange as it may seem, fish farmers do practice selective breeding like any other livestock farmer. But instead of breeding to an individual sire for it's desirable traits, fish farmers recognize groups of fish that exhibit characteristics they are looking to enhance in their stock. Examples of traits that fish are bred for include behavioral characteristics such as eating pelleted feed and remaining calm in large, confined schools. But fish farmers also recognize that fish should have a certain look for conformation that any livestock farmer develops an eye for. A wild trout will be long and slender, Dave said, but at a glance he can see that his farmed trout have larger shoulders and are more developed then their wild cousins.

While we're comparing fish to other farm livestock, fish farmers like Dave like to talk about feed efficiency (as if there is some sort of competition for who has the most "farmable" animal). Feed efficiency is a term used by all livestock farmers that is defined as the amount of feed required to produce a unit of weight gain. Beef cattle, for example, might have a feed efficiency ration of 6:1, that is, for every six pounds of feed the animal consumes it gains one pound. Fish, specifically trout, have a feed efficiency ratio of about 1:1, Smith said.

A combination of factors - that the United States doesn't produce as much fish as it consumes, that freshwater fish farms can thrive in the Midwest and that there is a dwindling supply of certain popular species of wild fish - all work to makes Smith and other like him excited about he future of aquaculture in Ohio. "Aquaculture is the only place growth can happen, because wild fish supplies are getting tapped out," he said.

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