Aquaculture in the United States has grown at a slower rate than the rest of the world in spite of abundant resources to support its growth. Although regulatory costs have widely been cited as the cause, there has not been a comprehensive attempt to examine cost structures, productivity, and associated efficiencies across various species, production systems, and scales of production in the United States. In this analysis, 58 comprehensive enterprise budgets were developed for various management strategies and scales of production for catfish, baitfish/sportfish, and largemouth bass foodfish in ponds, trout production in raceways, and recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) production of Atlantic salmon, trout, and tilapia in the United States. Results showed long‐term profitability only for pond production of catfish, trout, largemouth bass, and baitfish/sportfish (only if annualized capital costs of baitfish/sportfish ponds were treated as sunk costs given the pond ages). None of the RAS showed profits, but larger‐scale RAS showed fewer losses (in $/kg of fish produced) than smaller‐scale RAS. Economies of scale were found for all species/systems analyzed. Feed, capital, labor, management, energy, and fingerling costs (in some scenarios) were identified as the major factors contributing to overall costs of production, but the order of importance varied with the species/system/scale. For those species/systems for which variable costs tended to be the greatest type of costs, improvements in feed conversion ratio and labor productivity (kg of fish produced per $ of annual labor cost) have the greatest potential to reduce per‐unit costs of production. For RAS, improving productivity of both labor and capital (in terms of kg of fish produced per $ of annualized capital costs) may be as important as production scale to achieve profitability. Labor and capital use productivity were much greater on the well‐established and generally profitable catfish and trout businesses than in the RAS scenarios analyzed. Results should be of value to lenders, investors, those who make decisions on research funding priorities, and policymakers.

中文翻译：

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美国池塘，水道和RAS水产养殖的成本驱动因素和获利能力

尽管有足够的资源来支持其发展，但美国水产养殖的增长速度却低于世界其他地区。尽管监管成本已被广泛认为是原因，但在美国尚未进行全面的尝试来研究成本结构，生产率以及各种物种，生产系统和生产规模的相关效率。在此分析中，针对各种管理策略和池塘，cat鱼/鲈鱼，大口黑鲈食用鱼，水道的鳟鱼生产以及大西洋鲑鱼，鳟鱼的循环水产养殖系统（RAS）生产的各种管理策略和生产规模，制定了58个综合企业预算。和美国的罗非鱼。结果表明，仅for鱼，鳟鱼，大嘴鲈，以及饵料/运动鱼（仅在将饵料/运动鱼池塘的年化资本成本视池塘龄而定为沉没成本的情况下）。没有一个RAS显示利润，但是较大规模的RAS显示的损失（以生产的美元/千克鱼为单位）比较小规模的RAS少。发现了所分析的所有物种/系统的规模经济。饲料，资本，劳动力，管理，能源和鱼种成本（在某些情况下）被确定为构成总生产成本的主要因素，但是重要性的顺序随物种/系统/规模而变化。对于那些以可变成本为最大成本类型的物种/系统，提高饲料转化率和劳动生产率（每千克年劳动成本所产生的鱼千克数）具有降低单位生产成本的最大潜力。 。对于RAS，提高劳动生产率和资本生产率（以每美元年度资本成本产生的鱼公斤数计算）与实现盈利的生产规模同等重要。与分析的RAS情景相比，在既有根基且普遍盈利的cat鱼和鳟鱼企业中，劳动和资本使用生产率要高得多。结果应对贷方，投资者，对研究资金优先级做出决策的人以及决策者具有价值。