Essentially fish farming has surpassed the wild catch and the meat
output of the beef industry. Most of this has gone by unnoticed by
most of us and is a continuing global expansion. Aspects of the
process are not sustainable, but these are solvable problems which
are been solved. In time, and this is not too far away, fish
farming will generally eliminate the bulk of the wild fishery in
favor of managed stocks at the least.
Most likely fish feed will be drawn generally from krill with some
grain augmentation perhaps as well as the recycling of fish waste.
All this can be augmented by freezedrying rather than cooking to
produce pellets. That may already been done but I do not know except
that the research was well underway twenty years ago.
Fish farming got serious thirty years ago and has experienced
exponential growth ever since because cheap fish protein is on
everyone's menu.
Fish farming tops
beef production in race to the plate
The human diet appears
to have reached an important milestone, as worldwide fish farm
production has surpassed beef production for the first time in the
modern era.
That's according to
figures from the United Nations and U.S. Department of Agriculture.
It's another sign of
the fish farming boom, taking place across the globe, which has also
seen more and more universities dedicate programs to aquaculture.
The UN’s Food and
Agriculture Organization estimates that fish farm production has
grown by six times over the last 20 years.
"There's a demand
for fish protein,” said research scientist Cyr Couturier of the
Marine Institute at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Couturier's research
focuses on reducing the environmental impact of aquaculture.
He says he's not
surprised beef has fallen behind food produced on fish farms.
"It's a good
healthy source of animal protein, and I think that's another reason
why there's a drive to produce more on the planet,” Couturier said.
Everything from fish
to seaweed and shellfish is farmed today. And not surprisingly, China
leads the world in aquaculture.
"I think farmed
fish will be part of the answer in terms of food supply,” said
Janet Larsen, research director with the Earth Policy Institute in
the U.S.
Aquaculture is the
least energy-intensive means of producing animal protein, but not all
fish farms are created equal, says Larsen.
Some threaten
ecologically-sensitive areas while farming certain species, such as
salmon, causes a drain on wild fish.
"We're
overfishing a lot of our smaller fish stocks like menhaden, herring
or sardines so that we could grind them up into fish meal and fish
oil to feed to these farmed fish,” she said.
Larsen predicts that,
for the first time, more fish and seafood will be produced on
farms this year than caught in the wild, meaning the need for
sustainable aquaculture is greater than ever.
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