Abstract

Genesis of the sanitary and environmental crisis currently afecting the Chilean salmon farming industry. Salmon farming is by no mean an easy activity. To take a species – salmon – that freely grows in nature and to try commercially to raise it in cultivation tanks trying to reproduce in the enclosure the biological dynamics that obtains in rivers, lakes or in the open sea, constitutes an act of extreme audacity which ignores the imperfect knowledge and understanding we have about the genetic, oceanographic, environmental and sanitary conditions which affect the welfare and growth of salmon in captivity, the variance of said conditions across regions and even across localities of a given region, and the difficulty of codifying and predicting the incidence of the various forces affecting the growth of the biomass grown in captivity. Temperature, oxygen content, salinity and ph of the water, nutritional elements as well as pathogens and vectors freely moving in the water, nature of water currents and sediments of the ocean platform (and much more) constitutéstate conditions´hich significantly affect the welfare and growth of the biomass under cultivation. These forces vary from one location to another making it very difficult to operate on the basis of one single and universal production organization model. In the parlance of economists the production function is not completely specified and codified on an ex ante basis, and demands to bére-discovered´ase to case, by experimentation, trial and error and learning.. Location specific knowledge generation is needed and recurrent adaptation of production routines is required on the face of changing environmental circumstances if salmon farming is to be succesful at all.. On the other hand, diversity is by no means less significant when we look at the so calledcontrol variables´hich are those in which the firm can freely make its own strategic choices deciding how to organize production. Density of fish – kgs of fish per cubic meter of water) in the cultivation tank, quality of the smolt (young fish sown for cultivation), salmon food, vaccination techniques, transport of breeders between cultivation centers, bio-security measures employed for the disposal of mortality, for the cleaning of nets, for the feeding of fish (and much more) appear among these variables upon which the firm can freely act making its own choices. As in the case of the state variables salmon farming firms operate with imperfect information as to the relative incidence of the control variables upon the growth rate and welfare of the biomass under cultivation. There are multiple trade-offs (biological and commercial) between both state and control variables and also between the later ones, as for example when a firm opts for putting better (and more expensive) smolts for cultivation in the expectation of ataining a lower rate of fish mortality and higher unit gross margins at the end of the production campaign. Such decision is made under a great deal of uncertainty without much knowledge about future states of the world.