Turtle farming is the practice of raising turtles and tortoises of various species commercially. Raised animals are sold for use as gourmet food, traditional medicine ingredients, or as pets. Some farms also sell young animals to other farms, either as breeding stock, or more commonly to be raised there to a larger size for subsequent resale. Turtle farms primarily raise freshwater turtles (primarily, Chinese softshell turtles as a food source and sliders and cooter turtles for the pet trade); therefore, turtle farming is usually classified as aquaculture. However, some terrestrial tortoises (e.g. Cuora mouhotii) are also raised on farms for the pet trade. Only three serious attempts are believed to have been made to farm sea turtles. Only one of them, in Cayman Islands, continues to operate. The one in Australia's Torres Strait Islands folded after a few years of operation, and the one in Réunion has been converted to a public aquarium (Kélonia).
Geography
Japan Japan is said to be the pioneer of softshelled turtle (Pelodiscus sinensis) farming, with the first farm started by Kurajiro Hatori in Fukagawa near Tokyo in 1866. Initially stocked with wild-caught animals, the farm started breeding them in 1875. By the early 20th century, Hattori's farm had about 13.6 hectares of turtle ponds; it was reported to produce 82,000 eggs in 1904, and 60,000 animals of market size in 1907. According to the report of the Japanese zoologist Kakichi Mitsukuri, who conducted a significant amount of research at Hattori's farm in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the main food supplied to the turtles was crushed bivalve mollusks, Mactra veneriformis (シオフキガイ, shiofuki, in Japanese), from Tokyo Bay. This was supplemented with byproducts of fish processing and sericulture, as well as boiled wheat. The farm turtles lived in a symbiotic relationship with carp and eels, which were raised in the same ponds. The fish stirred up the mud, and the shy turtles felt more comfortable foraging in turbid water. Hattori's company has survived into the 21st century, as the Hattori-Nakamura Soft-Shelled Turtle Farm, operating in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture. According to a 1991 report, Japan's turtle farm industry continued to be mostly based in central Japan, but was expanding to the warmer southern parts of the country.
China
The majority of the world's turtle farms are probably located in China. Ancient Chinese literature (Fan Li's The Art of Fish-Breeding, 5th century BCE) contains references to keeping softshell turtles in fish ponds to control fish stocking density. According to a study published in 2007, over a thousand turtle farms operated in China. A later report by the same team (Shi Haitao, James F. Parham, et al.), published in January 2008, was based on an attempt to survey all 1,499 turtle farms that were registered with the appropriate authorities of the People's Republic of China (namely, the Endangered Species Import and Export Management Office, and the Forestry Bureaus of individual provinces). The farms were mostly located in China's southern provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, and Hunan, although more recent sources indicate Zhejiang as particularly important. Some of the farms have been operating since the 1980s, the industry steadily growing since. According to the responses obtained from 684 of those farms, they had a total of than 300 million animals, and sold over 128 million turtles each year, with the total weight of about 93,000 tons. Extrapolating from this sample, the researchers estimated that about 300 million farm-raised turtles are sold annually by China's registered turtle farms, worth (presumably, at the wholesale prices) around US$750 million. They note that a large number of unregistered farms also exist. According to more recent Chinese statistics, annual production just of Chinese softshelled turtle amounted to 204,000 tons in 2008.
The most common species raised by Chinese turtle farmers is the Chinese softshell turtle (Pelodiscus sinensis), accounting for over 97% of all reported sales, both in terms of head count (124.8 million in the 684-farm sample) and weight. Large-scale production of this species appears to have been successful in satisfying China gourmets' demand for its meat, which has been reflected in the price drop: while in the mid-1990s, wild-caught softshelled turtles retailed for CNY 500 per Chinese pound or jin (500 g), and farm-raised ones at over CNY 200 / Chinese pound, by 1999 the price for farm-raised softshelled turtles dropped to CNY 60 per Chinese pound, and by 2009, to merely CNY 15-16 per Chinese pound. Other species bred and raised in large numbers (in excess of 10,000 per year, each) in China are the wattle-necked softshell turtle (Palea steindachneri), Chinese pond turtle (Chinemys reevesii), yellow pond turtle (Mauremys mutica), Chinese stripe-necked turtle (Ocadia sinensis) and red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta elegans). Numerous other species are farmed in smaller quantities. Among these is the rare golden coin turtle (Cuora trifasciata), fetching almost US$1,800 per turtle, as opposed to around $6.50 for a common Chinese softshell turtle, or $80 for a keeled box turtle (Cuora mouhotii) sold to pet trade, due to its rarity and purported medicinal value. In a report from a Tunchang County, Hainan, turtle farm, published by James F. Parham and Shi Haitao in 2000, the researchers give a general idea of such an enterprise. According to the owner, the farm, established in 1983, had around 50,000 animals of over 50 different aquatic and terrestrial species. The majority, 30,000, were the common Chinese softshell turtle.
There were also 7,000 to 8,000 yellow pond turtles, and at least 1,000 of the prized golden coin turtle. The adult turtles lived in an 8 hectares (20 acres) outdoor breeding area, while the young ones were kept in indoor raising ponds. Hybridization between various turtle species often occurs on the farms. This has often been unintentional, and was especially characteristic of the early days of the industry. Sometimes, however, hybridization is encouraged, e.g. to produce the hybrids of the valuable golden coin turtle and the more common yellow pond turtle. These hybrid turtles, known as the Fujian pond turtle (Mauremys iversoni), are sold to customers as pure-blood golden coin turtles.
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