From farm to palate

Updated: 2015-07-03 07:21

By Krishna Kumar Vr(China Daily Europe)

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Aquaculture takes pressure off ocean stocks while sating world's appetite

In the near future, it is likely that much of the seafood that finds its way on to diners' plates across the world will no longer actually come from the sea.

When it comes to human consumption, fish from aquaculture - also known as fish farming - will surpass fish caught on the high seas by 2023, according to a joint report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

 From farm to palate

An aerial view of fish farms near Hefei, Eastern China's Anhui province. Global fish production is expected to expand by 17 percent over the next decade with China currently responsible for around 60 percent of the market. AFP

From farm to palate

Another change is also afloat. From high-value items on the menu such as salmon, sea bass and shrimp to low-value varieties like catfish and carp, much of what will be consumed in the future may well come from Asia.

The OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2014-2023 also says that global fish production is expected to expand by 17 percent over the next decade. And much of this will be driven by growth in Asia, with fish farms in the region - particularly in China - contributing a major portion of the increase.

At present, China is responsible for around 60 percent of the global aquaculture industry; while other dominant players are India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines, Japan and South Korea.

"In recent years, production from aquaculture especially in Asia has increased rapidly to address the decline in (wild) fisheries due to overfishing and poor management," says Lam Toong Jin, emeritus professor at the department of biological sciences at National University of Singapore.

In the past three decades, sea fisheries' production increased from 69 million to 93 million tons. But during the same period, world aquaculture production increased from 5 million to 63 million tons. This expansion has allowed markets to meet the increasing demand for fish and fish products, especially in Asia, which consumes more than half of the world's fish products.

Catches from the wild are unlikely to grow in the future as most fish stocks are currently fully exploited, if not over-exploited. Global production from wild fisheries (also known as capture fisheries) will likely remain stable at around 93 million tons during the 2010-30 period, according to the World Bank.

However, the share of aquaculture in total fishery production will grow from an average of 42 percent in 2013 to 49 percent in 2023. "Excluding non-food uses, aquaculture fish production is expected to surpass capture fisheries, with the share reaching 53 percent by 2023," says the OECD-FAO report.

By 2023, aquaculture is expected to expand in all continents, with growth levels of 39 percent for Africa and 30 percent for Oceania. However, a large proportion is likely to continue to come from Asian fish farms, which account for about 88 percent of world production. China will remain the main producer, with 62 percent of total global production.

Chris Kennedy, a Melbourne-based aquaculture risk manager at marine insurance firm Sunderland Marine, sees the growth of the sector continuing. "Lower value aquaculture production in many Asian countries continues to meet domestic requirements," he says.

A World Bank report, Fish to 2030: Prospects for Fisheries and Aquaculture, says that as capture fisheries reach their limits, aquaculture will not only help satisfy the growing global appetite for fish and other seafood but also will meet demand for other fish products such as fish meal - ground dried fish used for animal feed and fertilizer - and fish oil.

In terms of fish meal, the OECD-FAO report says that developing Asian countries will be the main importers.

Fish meal and fish oil are both used as feed for aquaculture to meet the nutritional needs of some fish species. Fish oil is primarily used for carnivore finfish such as salmon, sea bass and sea bream.

So the increase in demand for feed from the aquaculture industry itself is also contributing to the further growth of the sector.

"With further expansion of the aquaculture industry, demand for large quantities of feed ingredients, particularly fish meal, will go up," says Ye Yimin, chief of the fisheries and aquaculture department at the FAO.

"In the long term, the availability of fish meal can be a potential threat to the sustainability of species that require a high level of fish meal in their feed."

Since around 2000, there has been increasing pressure on fish meal and fish oil prices due to strong demand from the aquaculture sector in many Asian countries, especially China.

China has been actively developing its aquaculture industry through government support and private enterprise, explains Yvonne Sadovy, a professor of biological sciences at The University of Hong Kong.

China is diversified in terms of aquaculture species and farming systems and it has a strong tradition and world-leading expertise in many aspects of aquaculture, according to a 2014 FAO report, The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture.

On the other hand, aquaculture output by some major producers - most notably the United States, Spain, France, Italy, Japan and South Korea - has fallen in recent years. This has been a result of the huge availability of fish imported from developing Asian countries, where production costs are relatively low, and also because Asian producers have focused on export-oriented species.

"Aquaculture in the region has benefited to a greater degree from cost reductions through productivity gains and economies of scale," says Patrick Hone, executive director at the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation, an organization jointly funded by the Australian government and the country's fishing industry.

Inland aquaculture has been steadily growing as a proportion of the total farmed food fish production, from 50 percent in 1980 to 63 percent in 2012.

Food fish production from inland aquaculture, which generally uses freshwater, and from mariculture - a branch of aquaculture that farms fish in the ocean or in onshore tanks using seawater - were at around the same level in 1980.

However, inland aquaculture growth has since outpaced mariculture growth, with average annual growth rates of 9.2 and 7.6 percent, respectively.

The rapid growth in inland aquaculture reflects the fact that it is more accessible than mariculture for developing countries, according to The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture.

The subsector is also expected, through continued promotion and sustainable development, to be a leading player in providing long-term food and nutrition security in many developing countries in the coming decades, the report says.

However, the rapid growth of aquaculture has raised questions concerning the environmental sustainability of industry growth. Central to these concerns are the demands that aquaculture places on biophysical resources and the pressure placed on the environment from waste.

"Intensive aquaculture development, if not adequately managed, may create adverse environmental impacts that eventually lead to unsustainability. In order to optimize the resource usage and minimize its impacts on the environment, development of sustainable aquaculture systems is now a major goal," said Lam from National University of Singapore in his paper, Meeting the Needs for More Fish Through Aquaculture, which he co-authored with Doa Huy Giap from the university's Tropical Marine Science Institute.

History has shown that most countries in the region have rather weak capacity to effectively control cross-border aquatic animal disease through good biosecurity control. Intensive aquaculture will not be sustainable unless this is significantly improved, says Ye of the FAO.

(China Daily European Weekly 07/03/2015 page16)