Snail Farming and What It’s All About?

Snail farming in Europe. Photo by: radiokerry.ie

Never thought that snail farming to be one of the most profitable farming industries today. Even though it’s not as popular as many other farming industries, snail farming gain popularity when their usage get more than just for human consumption. While only few countries in the world popular with snail’s dishes but beauty industries spread to wider user and the substances for their products produces by this wonderful creature; snail.

Snail farming is not new to human. The farming practice had been described long ago in Lumaca romana, (translation: Roman snail) by Fulvius Lippinus (49 BC). We don’t know how long it’s been practiced before the documentation. It also indicate snail was one of the important resources since long-long ago.

Snail farming known as heliciculture, or heliculture is the process of raising land snails for human use either as food source or other usage such as producing slime for cosmetics industries or snail eggs as a type of caviar. There are many land snails use as food all around the world, but the popular snails known as escargot mostly refers to either Helix aspersa or Helix pomatia, and they both are tasty.

Snails ready to be ship in UK. Photo by: thatsfarming.com

Snail farming in Africa generate good income for farmer. Photo by: heifer.org 

While for cosmetic purposes, snails slime been used since ancient Greek to improve face moisture, to reduce wrinkles and to rejuvenate the skin (that includes reducing scars or blemishes). Snail’s slime or mucin contain hyaluronic acid, glycoprotein enzymes and peptides – that used in many other products not produced by the snail mucin.

If you’re interested to try the snail mucin products, it’s better you to try the ready cosmetics – for the mucus/mucin already treated clinically for safety usage (so use the known brands for extra safety). Snails as any other animals can be infested by many diseases, pest, worms and many other kind of infection. Proper preparation is very important to make sure your safety for using such kind of products.

Back to the snail’s farming, it can generate large margin of income – for the cost of running snail’s farm is lower. Instead snail’s farm getting popular not only in European countries but it also grows rapidly in Africa, North and South America and Australia. In fact there are many other species of snails being farmed. Some of the species included;

Helix aspersa, also known as "petit gris" one of popular in snail cuisines. Photo by: Waugsberg

One of popular dishes with snail. Photo by: escargot-world.com 

• Helix aspersa, also known as "petit gris," "small grey snail," the "escargot chagrine," or "la zigrinata".
• Helix pomatia, also known as "Roman snail," "apple snail," "lunar," "la vignaiola," the German "Weinbergschnecke," the French "escargot de Bourgogne" or "Burgundy snail," or "gros blanc".
• Otala lacteal, also known as "vineyard snail," "milk snail," or "Spanish snail".
• Iberus alonensis, the Spanish "vaqueta" or "serrana".
• Cepaea nemoralis, "grove snail," or the Spanish "vaqueta" from central and Europe and introduced to United States.
• Cepaea hortensis, "white-lipped snail" native to central and northern Europe.
• Otala punctate, "vaqueta" found in some part of Spain.
• Eobania vermiculata, "vinyala," "mongeta," or "xona", from the Mediterranean countries, then introduced into Louisiana and Texas.
• Helix lucorum, "escargo turc" quite big with size up to 45 mm across from central Italy and Yugoslavia, Crimea to Turkey and around Black Sea.
• Helix adanensis, from Turkey.
• Helix aperta, native to France, Italy and other Mediterranean countries. Nowadays already established in California and Louisiana.
• Theba pisana, "banded snail" or the "cargol avellanenc", native to Sicily and spread to several European countries, including England.
• Sphincterochila candidissima, also known as "cargol mongeta," or "cargol jueu"
• Achatina fulica, or giant African Snails can reach size up to 326 mm (1 ft ¾ in) in length. Native to south of the Sahara in East Africa. Also caused serious agricultural pest problem in other areas such as California, Hawaii and North Miami Florida. Still giant African Snails is the most popular snail as pet.

All of the snails above are example of land snails that grown in snails farming. Without proper care snails can be serious agricultural pest problem especially when it come from other areas. Some snail species can increase in numbers very rapidly when the condition is right such as giant African snail that threaten not only native snails but also others animals that feed on the same food sources.

Snail caviar another new product: Photo by: caracolchile.blogspot.my

Beauty creams with snail's mucin: Photo by: nylonpink.tv 

As the snails farming is still considered new. Many other possibilities can be achieved with more research and development to identify the potential of snail’s base products. While at the same time, farmers need to be responsible to make sure the safety of the farming method to avoid the harmful effect of snails to natural/local environment.

Fish Farming Of The Future

Atlantic salmon is threaten in the wild. Photo by: imgur.com

Fish is one of the important protein sources but badly affected by many issues from pollution, over-fishing, unsafe even for farmed fish and caused threats to environment. While stopping fish farming will never stop the other threats for the wild fish and we still need fish as part of our foods. Luckily some of us never stop to find better ways to raise farm fish with better condition.

Farming fish is not an easy job especially salmon that requires both between salt water and fresh water. This fish is bigger in size with carnivorous appetite. Farming salmon in the net-pens over the rivers and lakes been practiced for so long and proven caused many problems for the fish itself and for the environment. Using other fishes as their food also another reason salmon farming will not solve the over-fishing problem.

Atlantic salmon swimming in the wild. Photo by: imgur.com

Cleaner water and easier to control (land farming). Photo by: seacoreseafood.com

With more people come forward and pressure from the consumers, fish farmers find another solution – to raise salmon in land away from natural water supply. With enclosed environment all factors are control properly from the quality of water, oxygen content in the water, salinity to food supplies. These lead to easier manage conditions; even though the cost of building the facilities far higher than traditional net-pens farming.

One of the pioneering company in this technology is KUTERRA that raising Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) on their farm at Northern Vancouver Island, Canada.

The land farming allows farmers to control many other threats to their fish such as predators, pollution from the water, diseases and water from the farm also never goes into the river/sea. With high circulation of water, low fish feed, controlled temperature and oxygen, the growth of fish are much faster with no diseases. In case of diseases they can change all the water and sanitized all the facilities again.

Damage net in net-pens farming: Photo by: KUOWPHOTO/MEGAN FARMER

More and more land farm will be build. Photo by: undercurrentnews.com

Even though the cost to build land farm are far higher, but it can produce higher yield with good quality of fish. Not to mention they never caused any harm to nature (other than the land they need to use to build the farm). This technology is still in its early stage and there are more improvement in the process and management that will bring better result.

In fact salmon farming is not the only technology that got a facelift in recent years. All other fishes with high demands and threaten in the wild such as tuna, grouper, cobia, puffer fish, and few other shellfish/crustaceans also had been upgraded. This upgrade not only to produce more production but also to make sure that the produce will be safe for human consumption with less impact to the environment.

Salmon produced by KUTERRA. Photo by: kuterra.com

Deep sea farming also will be part of future fish farming. Photo by: innovasea.com 

With more people work together to improve the quality of fish farming industries, it will benefits both the consumers and the farmers. While at the same time we hope that will allow the restoring amount of the fish in the wild from over fishing – but still threatens by pollutions of many kinds.

Which Potato?

Do you recognize all the types of these potatoes?

We all love fries and know that it come from potato. Same as any other commercial crop there are only few of them that we know. How potatoes will look like in the wild and there are many other things that we should know about this wonderful plant?

Potato (Solanum tuberosum) is one of the tuberous plants that become important food source for human all around the world. Even though nowadays we can buy potato from anywhere in the world, it’s actually originated from South America Andes; introduced to Europe in the second half of 16^th century by Spanish. Today it become the forth-largest food crop in the world, following maize, wheat, and rice.

They area not just varies, but also colorful.

There are about 5,000 potato varieties worldwide. Three thousand of them can be found in Andes, most of them in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, and Colombia. Same as many other commercial plants, potatoes had cross-breed to produce resistant to diseases and pests, while there are also genetically modified varieties in the United States.

We might classify potatoes in different ways; but here one of the popular classification methods is through their important characteristics such as;

Starchy: Few types like classic Idaho or Russet are high in starch and low in moisture. They are great for boiling, baking and frying. Anyway they don’t hold their shape well, so they nor suitable for dishes like casseroles, gratins and potato salads.

Waxy: Some examples like New Potatoes, they have low starch instead creamier, firm and moist and holds its shape well after cooking, this type of potatoes suitable for roasting, boiling, casseroles and potato salads.

All-Purpose: These potatoes have medium content of starch and categorized between starchy and waxy. There are easier to use and truly multi-purpose for any dishes. One of the examples is the Yukon Gold.

Adirondack Blue - Waxy.

Adirondack Red - Waxy.

Carola - Waxy.

Fingerling - Waxy.

Idaho Russet - Starchy.

Inca Gold - Waxy.

Katahdin - Starchy.

New Potatoes - Waxy.

Purple Peruvian - All purpose.

Purple Viking - Waxy.

Red Bliss - Waxy.

Rose Gold - Waxy.

Yukon Gold - All purpose.

Since there are many other types of potatoes, we can keep on looking for many other varieties and perhaps someday we can sample the taste too. Keep on searching and share it with us if you find anything interesting about potatoes. 

How Pearl Created By Oyster

Pearl in the oyster.

Pearl is a substance that is produced not only by the oyster, but by most living things that are similar to oysters. The process of formation of a natural pearl is rare. So today pearls are produced mainly by the oyster farming industry learned thousands of years ago.

Pearls are actually produced from 'calcium carbonate' as well as materials to produce the shell of the oyster itself. This layer is used to coat materials that entered into the oyster shell that may consist of foreign objects such as sand and other materials. These foreign objects can cause injury to the soft parts of the oyster, so it needs to be overlaid with 'nacre' also known as 'mother of pearl'. This material can be seen on the inside of an oyster shell or other shellfish.

Various types of pearls produced by living things.

Pearls extracted from oysters.

Apart from used to make jewelries, pearls are also used in cosmetics, drugs and even paint. While the pearls available today are mostly produced through the oyster farming industry, to ensure that the oyster producing pearls, the foreign objects are inserted manually into the oyster to be plated with 'nacre' and producing the pearls.

For a long time pearl considered being among the precious materials, even today it can be found at cheaper price, it still requires an oyster to produce it.

Crown produced from natural pearls.

Black pearl and oyster.