Can fish farming solve China’s food security issues and the planet’s growing need for sustainable protein?
- ‘Blue foods’ have a lower environmental impact compared to livestock, and aquaculture production for food consumption now exceeds that of wild capture
- With the Earth’s population expected to rise by 3 billion by end of the century, expert says next step after discussing food security is ‘nutrition security’
As the human population keeps growing so too does the need for nutritious food, raising the question of how to feed the billions more people projected to be added to the population by the end of this century.
China’s aquaculture production, which includes farmed oysters, freshwater fish and prawns, has kept growing, albeit at a slower pace in recent years because of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and environmental protection regulations. Climate change is another factor causing changes in the diverse industry.
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Sustainable aquaculture has been important for addressing food security and protecting people’s health and researchers are now looking into ways to boost output.
A study published in Nature journal in April argued that the ocean’s ability to supply food in the future would be challenged by the expected increase in demand for seafood.
“The human population is expected to increase by 3 billion by the end of the century, with a rise in affluence and demand for meat. Climate change will further challenge the ability of the ocean to provide food,” Reniel Cabral, co-author of the study and a senior lecturer at the James Cook University in Australia, was quoted as saying by the university’s website.
Cabral and his colleagues found that reforming fisheries and expanding sustainable marine aquaculture were critical measures for increasing seafood production, but even progressive reforms would not maintain global seafood production per capita under the most severe emissions scenario.
But it was still vital to highlight the importance of reforming wild fisheries to allow mariculture expansion, Cabral said, adding that “cultivating finfish and shellfish may just be the answer to this looming food security challenge”.
Blue foods
“Blue foods” are foods from aquatic sources, including wild capture fisheries and freshwater and marine aquaculture products. Because of their lower environmental impact compared to livestock, blue foods are central to transforming the global food system.
According to estimates compiled by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, by 2050 the world will need to produce 60 per cent more food to feed a population of 9.3 billion. And doing that with a farming-as-usual approach will take too heavy a toll on natural resources.
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Robert Jones, global lead for aquaculture at The Nature Conservancy (TNC), a US-based environmental organisation, said countries needed to increase food output and do it within the Earth’s limits.
“We need to figure out how to produce food the most resource-efficient way possible: less carbon emissions per unit of output, less water use per unit of production and less feed conversion per unit of output.”
Aquaculture was the most resource-efficient means of animal protein production, Jones said, adding that it had about a tenth of the carbon emissions per unit of production as beef.
“So, we are encouraging countries to look at prioritising the development of their aquaculture sector in a sustainable way because getting more protein for ourselves from aquaculture compared to other sources is a comparatively responsible and climate-friendly thing to do.”
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Over the past four decades, aquaculture has been the fastest-growing global food sector, driven by robust seafood demand and supply constraints in traditional wild capture fisheries, according to a 2019 report by TNC and Encourage Capital, a New-York based investment firm.
Aquaculture production for food consumption now exceeds that of wild capture and is projected to continue to grow at an average rate of 2.1 per cent per year over the next decade, the report said.
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Aquaculture also plays an important role in national economies. The total first-sale value of wild fisheries and aquaculture production in 2016 was estimated at US$362 billion, of which US$232 billion was from aquaculture production, according to the FAO.
It calculates food prices will soar by 22.9 per cent this year, with a 40 per cent rise in wheat prices.
World Bank president David Malpass told BBC last month that if the crisis continued, record rises in food prices would push hundreds of millions people into poverty and lower nutrition.
Aquaculture in China
Since 1989, China has been the world’s largest producer of aquaculture seafood. In 2016, it produced more food from the sea and freshwater than the rest of the top 10 countries combined.
Aquaculture is very important for China’s economy and food security. The share of fisheries output in China’s agricultural output increased from 1.6 per cent in 1978 to 9.3 per cent in 2020, according to state-run People’s Daily.
The total value of China’s fishery industry reached 2.75 trillion yuan (US$412 billion) in 2020, with more than 1 trillion yuan from the aquaculture sector.
The nation’s overall seafood output rose from 64.5 million tonnes in 2017 to 65.4 million tonnes in 2020, while about 80 per cent of the output was aquaculture products.
Meanwhile, it is one of the key seafood processing countries. A study published in Science in January found that an estimated 75 per cent of China’s seafood imports were ultimately sold to other markets.
Zhang Wenbo, a lecturer at Shanghai Ocean University, said many countries sent seafood products to China for processing because the labour costs in the country were relatively low and the processing was more efficient.
“Tropical countries are not suitable to do the processing because their temperatures are too high. China is located at a relatively high latitude where most of the nations are developed nations,” he said.
Therefore, the key role of aquaculture in China’s food security should be stressed, Zhang said.
But for many countries, including China, aquaculture is not included in their food security strategies.
“When we talk about food security, we focus on crops and livestock,” Zhang said.
“Now we have reached a stage where we need to address nutrition security to maintain health … and aquaculture products are very important for human health. We think it should be included in the food security strategy.”
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Wang Yamin, a professor at Shandong University’s Marine College, said aquaculture products were an important component of food security.
“It can alleviate the food security problem and can replace some food consumption.”
Industry constraints
China’s wild fish catch has been gradually decreasing in recent years, partly because of its protection policies. In 2017, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs set a target to cut the country’s total wild catch from over 12 million tonnes in 2015 to under 10 million tonnes by 2020.
Its aquaculture production is still growing but at a slower pace. Experts said one reason was the limited availability of inland waters for aquaculture production.
“There are few inland waters for aquaculture production and most of the coastal freshwater is being used. There is plenty of space for deep sea farming but technically it is still immature,” said Wang Songlin, founder and chairman of the Qingdao Marine Conservation Society, an environmental non-governmental organisation in eastern Shandong province.
China’s aquaculture industry was further disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic and also by the country’s environmental protection policies, experts said.
“The pandemic has severely disrupted the aquaculture industry. Many of the high-end products are consumed in restaurants, but the catering sector has been greatly affected by the pandemic, and the seafood consumption has been seriously reduced,” Zhang Wenbo said.
Shandong University’s Wang Yamin added that China’s aquaculture production might flatline in the coming years as farming was prohibited in many inland waters and ponds because of environmental protection reasons.
Some local governments were also not enthusiastic about developing the aquaculture industry because the profits were low compared to industrial sectors, he said.
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Another factor affecting the aquatic industry is climate change, though aquaculture is a diverse industry and different places may experience different challenges.
Some regions and marine industries have already witnessed the effects of climate change.
Jones from TNC said the shellfish and oyster aquaculture industries in the US, as well as in other countries, were deemed canaries in the coal mine for climate change.
“One of the main problems is ocean acidification, which is the result of climate change and makes it difficult for shellfish larvae to grow their shells,” he said.
“We are seeing the effects of this in both two major production areas in the United States, in Washington state and Maine. It’s showing that these impacts of climate change are real.”
Jones added that one strategy for farmers was to rethink species and to find out those that were most resilient to the likely effects of climate change. Another was to use technology to improve management.
“The sensor technology and machine learning and advanced analytics around farms enable us to predict these events faster and enable us to adapt management around farms better,” he said.
“That’s going to be one key strategy going forward.”
