Monday, July 29, 2019

The Veramaris solution: How sustainable aquaculture will spark further growth in industry

by Veramaris, the Netherlands

As the demand for salmon at the dinner table surges globally in line with population growth, so does the pressure on small forage fish used in feeding them.


According to the FAO, overfishing and illegal poaching does contribute to the depletion of the world’s oceans finite quantity amount of small feeder fish like anchovy, sardines and sprat, used in aquaculture. And farmed fish aren’t the only species that rely on those small fish for food: the entire global marine ecosystem of  coastal communities relies on it a well.
 


The demand for salmon

And it’s big business. Industry research estimates the price/earnings to growth ratio (PEG) of the global aquaculture industry at about a US $175 billion market, is expected to grow to $225 billion by 2022. Salmon aquaculture alone accounts for 70 percent of that total and is the fastest growing food production system in the world, according to a recent report by Rabobank, entitled “100 billion-dollar baby: How aquaculture keeps growing.”

However, the problem is that two-thirds of the world's fish stocks today are either fished at their limit or over-fished, according to an analysis by the Bren School of Environmental Science and Earth Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the Environmental Defence Fund. Each year ,16 million metric tonnes of fish are caught solely to produce fishmeal and fish oil, with 80 percent of the fish oil going directly to aquaculture feeds.

Demand is expected to continue to soar. Already today, half of the fish eaten by people comes from aquaculture: by 2030, it will top 62 percent, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN. Fish production in 2016 reached a record high production level of 171 million metric tonnes for an also record per capita global consumption of 20 kilograms. The UN reports that the “fisheries sector is crucial in meeting FAO’s goal of a world without hunger and malnutrition.”


Read more HERE.

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