Aquaculture is an economic activity with a long tradition in Spain, especially in Galicia, which is the leading aquaculture producer at a national level. In addition, the growing demand places it as the industrial sector with the highest growth worldwide, with figures that increase year by year. Aware of this reality, the University of Vigo has been offering the Aquaculture Farm Management workshop as part of its summer course schedule for years, an activity taught by specialists in aquaculture and business management that, backed by the success of previous editions, is now in its eleventh edition..
Directed by Carlos Ferro, professor at the Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences, this course is intended for both active aquaculture professionals and people with training in Marine Sciences, Biology, sciences in general, or engineers who want to combine their field of knowledge with business management. In addition, it is also designed for those who want to take the step of becoming entrepreneurs, an aspect about which the course director emphasizes that “the development of the sector requires new ideas for exploitation, therefore, in recent editions a day related to entrepreneurship and training in marketing has been incorporated, seeking to generate value in aquaculture products”.
Multidisciplinary training to face the challenges of aquaculture
For students in the areas of Biology and Marine Sciences, it is not enough to just have the training received in the career, but to be able to move successfully in the aquaculture sector it is necessary to have a series of knowledge about the market, as well as the tools that allow studying it and getting the most out of it. In this sense, so that students can acquire multidisciplinary training, the course “combines knowledge from two areas of activity that almost never come together in the same person, on the one hand, economic-business management, and on the other, aquaculture activity, which is one of the relevant activities of the Galician GDP”, highlights the course director, who explains that the workshop methodology is based on the combination of informative pills, case development and field trips, distributed over five sessions, from June 17 to 21, in which registered people will be able to listen to twelve specialists in aquaculture and business management.
The first of the visits that will be made will be to IGAFA (Galician Institute for Aquaculture Training on the Island of Arousa), which will have a boat tour to learn all the details of the mussel farming process on rafts and a demonstration of work. The other visit will be to the Pescanova facilities in Porriño to see the process of adding value to the fishery product through pre-cooked products.
Over these eleven years, this summer course has been very well received by students and around 300 people have already attended it since its first edition. According to Carlos Ferro, the reasons for its success must be sought in the “combination of knowledge from the business and aquaculture fields, in word of mouth from previous editions, in its duration, in the dates of its implementation, in the thematic structure, in the field trips and in the quality of the teachers”
Registrations until May 31st
People interested in participating in this course can pre-register until May 31st through the Culturxest page. The cost of this workshop is 13 euros for the university community and 20 euros for non-university members. At the end of the workshop, a diploma will be awarded that students can use to validate 1 ECTS credit for undergraduate studies.
Source: DUVI
