Soon tropical prawn foie gras? The question may seem like a kamoulox but it arises. In Gers, a department known for its duck farms and foie gras, Géraud Laval created “Local prawns” for shrimp farming. “We import 100,000 tonnes of shrimp per year into France, or around two kilos per inhabitant,” underlines this former veterinarian who decided to embark on this astonishing agricultural adventure in our latitudes.
Based on this “phenomenal market”, Géraud Laval had the idea of launching in 2017 the first French shrimp farm, 100% “made in” Gers, where he settled with his wife and children after a long time journey. “Producing differently” meant taking the opposite view from the factory farms at the end of the world which decimate coastal ecosystems and practice intensive farming with several hundred shrimp per square meter and large volumes of fish meal to feed them. .
Shrimp in summer, trout in winter
In Idrac-Respaillès, a Gascon village of just over 200 inhabitants where Géraud Laval dug his three ponds (1.5 hectares in total), there are three to four shrimp per square meter and for food, the shrimp farmer prefers fertilize the water (with sunflower meal), the small water worms and insects doing the rest. The other strong idea of the project was also its adaptability to the environment. “Climatologists agree on this observation: temperatures are increasing,” underlines Géraud Laval.
“This summer, we had a record here at 42 degrees,” he says, and the 2023 season was that of his best yields precisely because the shrimp he chose develops particularly well in water whose temperature exceeds on average 25 degrees.
This specificity linked to temperatures also eliminates the invasive risk, the tropical shrimp cannot survive in water less than 14 degrees, such as that of a Gers river in the middle of winter, points out Géraud Laval who, from At the end of November, abandon prawns to raise trout. And for even more environmental safety, its pools are in a closed circuit, without any contact with neighboring waterways. Enough, the breeder hopes, to overcome the reluctance of public authorities sometimes worried about the idea of issuing operating authorizations for tropical shrimp farming.
Ain interested in shrimp farming
Géraud Laval dreams of being the initiator of a movement and he hopes to spread his concept of breeding: he chairs the interprofessional freshwater shrimp association (AICED) and willingly trains breeders wishing to get started. This is particularly the case for certain fish farmers in the ponds of Dombes (Ain), the leading French region for the production of pond fish.
But in this territory, the State blocks authorizations. Questioned in March on this subject by the local deputy, Jérome Buisson (RN), the Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau promised to harmonize the State’s view of these initiatives and to facilitate authorizations.