Feed price crisis pushes Andhra Pradesh shrimp farmers to the brink. Is better feed utilization the way out?

By Dr. Wiphada Mitbumrung, Ph.D. Applied Marine Biosciences — Wed Sep 09 2026

Shrimp farming in Coastal Andhra Pradesh, a sector that sustains more than 10 lakh livelihoods across over 3.5 lakh acres, is heading toward a standoff. On September 7, nearly 2,000 farmers gathered at Amalapuram in Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Konaseema district for a State-level meeting organized by the Andhra Pradesh State Aqua Farmers Association (APSAFA). The outcome: a resolution to declare a crop holiday from April if the State government fails to initiate talks on their concerns by September 30.

At the center of their grievance is the runaway cost of aqua feed. According to APSAFA president G. Gandhi Bhagawan Raju, feed companies have raised the maximum price of shrimp feed by ₹17 per kg within just two months, a jump farmers say the State's own price monitoring committee has failed to contain. "The price monitoring committee constituted by the State government has failed to prevent the rise in feed prices," Raju told the gathering.

Frustration has spilled beyond feed pricing alone. Farmers also announced a boycott of probiotics manufactured by feed companies, pledging to shift to other suppliers as a mark of protest, a sign of how deep the trust deficit has grown between growers and feed manufacturers. Alongside the crop holiday threat, APSAFA has urged the State government to press the Centre for a support price for shrimp, to cushion farmers against volatile market prices the way MSP does for certain crops.

With the current crop expected to be harvested by March and the next season set to begin in April after a month of pond preparation, September 30 has effectively become a deadline for the State government to act, or watch a large section of India's shrimp export engine grind to a halt.

A squeeze from both ends

What's striking about this crisis is that farmers are not the only ones bleeding. Ground-level industry insight suggests feed manufacturers are losing money too, an estimated US$0.5 per kg of feed produced, driven by a sharp spike in the cost of raw materials that go into aqua feed formulations. Fishmeal and fish oil inputs have become significantly more expensive globally, squeezing manufacturer margins even as they raise prices to farmers.

In other words, this is not simply a story of profiteering companies versus struggling farmers. Both sides are caught in the same vice: raw material inflation is pushing up production costs faster than either party can absorb them. Feed companies raise prices to survive; farmers, whose single largest input cost is feed, see their margins collapse as shrimp prices in the market haven't kept pace. The result is a standoff where a crop holiday threatens to hurt everyone in the value chain: farmers, feed producers, processors, and the roughly 10 lakh people whose livelihoods depend on this sector.

Why the real lever may be feed efficiency, not just price

If feed prices are unlikely to fall in the near term, given global raw material trends, then the more actionable lever for farmers may not be the price of feed, but how much shrimp they can produce per kilogram of feed used, commonly measured as the Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR).

A lower FCR means farmers extract more shrimp biomass from the same amount of feed, effectively reducing their real cost per kilogram of shrimp produced, even if feed prices themselves stay high. This is where feed utilization technology becomes relevant to the current crisis.

Products like AlphaGuard*L Plus, built around a key functional component, medium-chain triglycerides (MCT), work by lowering the pH inside the shrimp gut. This shift matters in two important ways:

Improved digestion and nutrient absorption: A lower gut pH creates a more favorable environment for digestive enzymes to break down feed efficiently, meaning more of the nutrients in each kilogram of feed are actually absorbed rather than excreted unused. This directly supports a lower FCR: shrimp grow more per unit of feed consumed.

Low FCR shrimp fed by AlphaGuard*L Plus at Blue Aqua Breeding Center, SingaporePhoto credit: Blue Aqua (BAI)

2. Suppression of Vibrio and gut health protection: Pathogenic Vibrio bacteria, a leading cause of white gut and related gut disease outbreaks in shrimp, thrive in less acidic gut conditions. By lowering gut pH, AlphaGuard*L Plus makes the gut environment inhospitable to Vibrio proliferation, helping reduce the incidence of white gut disease, a condition that itself causes feed wastage, slowed growth, and mortality when left unmanaged.

Together, these two effects, better nutrient utilization and lower disease pressure, mean farmers can get more productive value out of every kilogram of feed they buy, partially offsetting the impact of higher feed prices without needing feed companies to lower rates.

Conclusion

In a crisis where both farmers and feed manufacturers are losing money on the same kilogram of feed, tools that improve feed utilization, rather than just debating who absorbs the cost of raw material inflation, may offer the most immediate relief. Better FCR does not solve the underlying raw material cost problem, but it can meaningfully narrow the gap for farmers until a longer-term policy solution, such as a support price or more effective price regulation, is in place.

Sources: The Hindu, "Shrimp farmers in Andhra Pradesh threaten crop holiday if govt. fails to address rising feed prices by September 30," published/updated September 7, 2026..2Vibrio