The Galician mussel industry: Innovation and changes in the last forty years

Abstract

The mussels industry with a production that accounts for more than twenty five percent of the fresh product landings from the sea, and the full-time employment of more than 8000 people, is by far the largest productive activity of the Galician sea.

In the 1980s was noticed an increase in productivity related to processes of innovation in the industry of mussel. Together with it, the first organizational forms of the Galician-based production sector was constituted, with a spatial and administrative reordering for mussel rafts and crops. A new reality of the sector was maintained in both the marketing guidelines and the fact of initiating a vertical integration between the mussel industry and the commercialization. Everything was accompanied by changes in markets and strong tensions: derived from red tides that limit the operating cycle and even its profitability and also from the conflicts between the producing and transforming organizations, added to the competition in the markets of other countries, mainly Chile.

The reality of mussel culture and markets leads to a reformulation in the industry, with strategies for territorial diversification of suppliers, new technological improvements in production and even organizational, economic, and bioecological innovations