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    [OC] Top Shrimp Exporters, 2024
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    [OC] Top Shrimp Exporters, 2024


    🦐 🗺️ Where does your favorite shrimp actually come from?

    How many of you are shrimp eaters?

    Whether in the form of mariscos, scampi, gambas, or camarones and camarões, shrimp is one of the most popular delicacies worldwide. It’s become an integral part of the seafood preferences in cuisines as diverse as Cantonese or Mediterranean.

    In Latin America in particular, shrimp has formed part of delicious dishes such as Peruvian ceviche or Mexican gambas al ajillo. Yet neither Mexico nor Peru is the shrimp capital of the world. For that, you need to look to a much smaller country.

    There are fewer than 19M people living in Ecuador, compared to over 1.4B in India. And yet, since the early 2020s Ecuador has surpassed the world’s most populous country to claim the crown as top shrimp exporter.

    In fact, shrimp has become one of Ecuador’s economic lifelines. In 2023, the small Andean republic exported $7B worth of crustaceans, ahead of bananas at $4.77B and second only to the $12B it exported in crude petroleum.

    story continues… 💌

    Source: Trade Map – List of exporters for the selected product (Crustaceans)

    Tools: Figma, Rawgraphs

    Posted by latinometrics

    View 11 Comments

    11 Comments

    3. Old_timey_brain on

      TIL – Canada is a significant producer of shrimp.

      Yet, I never see them in the grocery store.

    4. tomrichards8464 on

      >In 2023, the small Andean republic exported $7B worth of crustaceans, ahead of bananas at $4.77B and second only to the $12B it exported in crude petroleum.

      What is going on with the data here? $7bn of crustaceans, but only $22m of shrimp? Is the source data annual and the graphic data weekly or something? Because if the graphic data is annual, Ecuador probably exports more value in footballers to Chelsea than shrimp to the world.

    5. dizzyhitman_007 on

      India is facing stiff competition from Ecuador for the export of shrimps due to two prime reasons.

      First is Ecuador’s geographical proximity to the United States. And second is Ecuador producing high-quality vannamei shrimps at a lower price, as that is its domestic species.

      And while India brings its brood stock – the term for the mother shrimp – in chartered flights from the US to breed to produce seeds for farming which leads to the cases where it is either of poor quality or unfit for the Indian environment in turn leading to disease among the shrimp produce.

      Futhermore, tariffs on shrimps from Ecuador at present are at 15 %, much lower than India’s which is at 59.72% severely denting the nation’s shrimps exports to the largest market in the world such as US, making Ecuadorian shrimp a more attractive market for the US to source from.

    6. Wooden_Researcher_36 on

      Shrimp is a dirty damn industry.

      You’ve basically got two options: either you **strip-mine the ocean floor** Bubba Gump-style (and in the process haul up and toss out **5-10 times more other sea life than the shrimp you keep**)… or you farm them in ponds that consume **up to 400 LITERS of water PER SHRIMP ON YOUR PLATE**. And “consume” is generous — that water ends up loaded with nitrates, sludge, and **antibiotics**. Where does it go? Often straight into rivers or the ocean, untreated. Most farms don’t bother with water-recycling systems.

      Sure, there are newer systems. Biofloc, zero-exchange setups, the “future of aquaculture” stuff, but those are still the exception, not the norm.

      And don’t forget the electricity bill for pumping and flushing all that water every day. Many farms turn over their entire pond volume once or twice daily just to keep the shrimp from dying in their own toxic soup.

      So yeah… maybe think about *that* next time you’re demolishing an “all-you-can-eat shrimp extravaganza” at a Disney resort.

      (Yeah, I know there are other ways to raise shrimp, but globally the share coming from things like lagoon setups is basically a rounding error.)

    10. GioRoggia on

      As a Brazilian who absolutely loves shrimp, when I moved to the US for a few years I was deeply disappointed by how bland the shrimp tasted there. I bought every type of shrimp I could find at the grocery stores – gulf, asian, argentinian, you name it – and it had so little taste it was only ever good when you made an excellent sauce for it.

      I never understood why it was so. Brazilian shrimp is always heavenly, even if you just steam it and add a pinch of salt.

    11. ToonMasterRace on

      USA was the largest shrimp exporter in the world in 1960 by quite a margin. Our agricultural industry has completely collapsed.