Global fish farming
Source: FAO
The amount of fish farmed globally has surpassed the wild catch for the first time as production soars to meet rising demand. In 2022, some 94.4mn tonnes of fish were farmed in pens and ponds, compared with 91mn tonnes caught in open water, according to a new report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. The boom in aquaculture — concentrated in Asia, which the FAO says accounts for 90 per cent of global production — was allowing the world to consume ever more fish, said Manuel Barange, director of the UN agency’s fisheries and aquaculture division. Average consumption per person per year has more than doubled since the 1960s, from around 9kg to 20.7kg, with more than 3bn people now relying on fish or seafood as their main source of protein, according to the FAO. “[Aquaculture] is the fastest-growing food production system in the world,” said Barange. This was good news in terms of food availability, he said, “because the increasing consumption of aquatic foods does not come on the back of greater exploitation of oceans, lakes and rivers”. However, environmental and animal welfare NGOs have criticised the FAO’s position. In an open letter addressed to Barange and published on Friday, signatories from some 160 organisations urged the UN body to exclude farmed salmon, sea bass, sea bream and other carnivorous fin fish from its definitions of sustainable aquaculture. They say the industrial farming of these species is “destroying local environments, depleting wild fish stocks and harming local economies”. …. Some 40 years ago, as much as 40 per cent of wild-caught fish was used for animal feed but this was now down to less than 20 per cent, he said. In the past, around 3kg to 4kg of fish meal was required to produce 1kg of a farmed fish such as salmon, he added. But different feed formulations meant this was now down to 1kg of fish meal to produce 1.2kg. On average across all fed aquaculture species, 1kg of fishmeal produced 4kg of fish, and for prawns, shrimps and salmon around 90 per cent of feed was vegetable-based, Barange said. This evolution had allowed aquaculture “to grow without using more fish from the ocean”.
Source: FT