Question 23909 — overseas

Summary

Mrs. Manuéla Kéclard-Mondésir draws the attention of the Minister of Agriculture and Food to the situation of the aquaculture sector in Martinique. While until recently this still contained some 40 hectares of breeding ponds, only one farm remains today, of 3 hectares. And the sector is set to disappear under the successive blows of the consequences of chlordecone and administrative ignorance. Indeed, the last aquaculture operation in Carbet, which had a prefectural authorization for around fifteen years, has now been refused on the grounds that it has changed species, going from Macrhrobrachium rosenbergii to Cherax quadricarinatus, a species which does not need a hatchery, which allows it not to be impacted by chlordecone pollution. For several years, however, elected officials financed the research and development of this crayfish, in particular by undertaking training programs with aquaculturists. This alternative could save the Martinique aquaculture industry. However, the administration refuses to authorize it, claiming, without prior studies but in view of experiences carried out in Polynesia, that it would be invasive. Which does not seem to be effective in the West Indies. Likewise, while farmers and aquaculturists in the Carbet have been using the water catchment from the Lajus canal since 1777, the administration is no longer responding to their request to restore the old catchment level (45 cm). She asks him to remedy this administrative imbroglio which endangers jobs and a weakened sector. After having been negligent for decades in matters of pollution by chlordecone, if the present administrative circumspections of precaution displayed are understandable, these must not fall into another extreme which would be not to make decisions on the basis of random principles but rather of local and serious experiments. The survival of Martinique’s agri-food sectors is at stake. She therefore also asks him what he intends to do to enable a restructuring and revival of the aquaculture sector in Martinique.

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