Applying economic decision tools to improve management and profitability of sandfish industries in the Asia–Pacific region

A component of the recent Australian Centre for International and Agricultural Research-funded sandfish project in the Philippines, Vietnam and Australia has been to build and refine economic decision tools for both sea ranching and pond-based culture of sandfish. Presented here is the background to these models and some basic theory required to understand model outputs. Models take a discounted cash flow approach to predicting returns over a given life cycle. Output includes the expected annual returns when the farm is paid off, and the maximum interest rate at which funds can be borrowed to invest in the project. A risk module allows the user to incorporate anticipated risk to return from a range of sources. Access to these models is open, and a web address is provided.