Located about six miles from I-95 in Fellsmere – where County Road 512 makes a sharp turn south toward State Road 60 – Florida Organic Aquaculture has built the first phase of what is being been hailed as the nation’s largest pole barn, a 4.2-acre structure the length of 3.5 football fields.
The initial structure is currently in the latter stages of upfit with twenty 830-cubic-meter biofloc raceway systems for growing shrimp. Touted as the largest closed-water, environmentally-safe, and energy-efficient shrimp production facility in the US, Florida Organic Aquaculture had its grand opening and ribbon-cutting celebration in early May 7, 2010.
Since the company’s inception in 2013, FOA has built from the ground-up a production building that covers 4.2 acres and features 20 individual raceways, each of which contains 225,000 gallons of water and 500,000 shrimp. FOA is in the process of ramping up production to ultimately produce more than 1 million pounds of shrimp per production building annually.
A second production building—which stands as the model for a growth plan that ultimately encompasses six more production buildings—is designed around 16 raceways, each with 280,000 gallons of water and biofloc, precisely controlled through state-of-the-art automation. Increasing its production capacity and shortening the production cycle from four months to three through careful management will help FOA earn a larger share of a global market that industry experts predict will rise from today’s annual consumption levels of nearly 8 million metric tons of farm-raised shrimp to 18 million metric tons by 2030.
FOA’s goal is to set a higher bar for sustainability in shrimp production. A fully recirculated water system eliminates environmental discharge from the raceways. Makeup water is sourced from 2,300-foot-deep seawater well, de-gassed and introduced directly to the raceways. Fresh water is drawn from a shallower well on the property.
According to ysi.com; the Source of photos: the internet
