United Nations: Fish Farming Could Reduce Famine

ROME, Italy, December 10, 2001 (ENS) - Aquaculture, or fish farming, is expected to boost food fish supplies worldwide over the next 20 years, helping to reduce poverty and food insecurity, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says.

An FAO report entitled "Aquaculture in the Third Millennium," released today by the FAO headquarters in Rome, concludes that aquaculture's contribution towards global fisheries landings continues to grow, dominating all other animal food producing sectors.

The percentage of seafood from wild fisheries is decreasing, and fish farming is the source of an increasing percentage of seafood in the United States and worldwide.

The value of U.S. aquaculture production has grown by five to 10 percent each year over the past decade, and aquaculture is regarded as the fastest growing segment of U.S. agriculture, according to a 1997 report by Environmental Defense on the environmental consequences of aquaculture in the United States. Fish are now farmed in every state and territory in the United States, and U.S. aquaculture production totals more than 400,000 metric tons of fish and shellfish, worth $729 million.

Since the FAO Technical Conference on Aquaculture in 1976 in Kyoto, Japan, aquaculture has gone through major changes, moving from small scale, homestead level activities to large scale commercial farming.

Over the past three decades the sector has expanded, diversified, intensified and advanced technologically and, as a result, its contribution to aquatic food production has also increased, the FAO says. A large proportion of global production now comes from small scale producers in developing countries, the report finds.

"Aquaculture in the Third Millennium" is the result of the Conference on Aquaculture held last February in Bangkok, Thailand, and organized by the FAO, the Network of Aquaculture Centre in Asia-Pacific (NACA), and the Government of Thailand. The report represents the most comprehensive and authoritative review of the status of aquaculture development in the world assembled to date.

The UN report is positive about fish farming despite environmentalists' objections that fish escaping from net pens contaminate the wild fish gene pool, and that fish waste contaminates the ocean floor beneath the pens with chemicals fed to keep the fish healthy.

Environmental Defense (ED) researchers report that wild fish are ground into fishmeal to raise farmed fish. "In many aquaculture systems, more protein, in the form of fishmeal, is used to feed farmed fish than is obtained from harvest of the farmed fish. In other words, farming of highly carnivorous species such as salmon, trout, and sea bream can result in a net loss of fish protein, not a net gain. Growing one pound of farmed salmon can require three to five pounds of wild caught fish," the researchers found.

Still, the FAO says its report reflects increased recognition that sustainable use of aquatic resources can only be achieved through "vigorous and combined efforts by all sectors involved: farmer cooperatives and agencies, regulators, policy makers and planners, scientists, nongovernmental organizations and other aquatic resource users."