After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, wise men in the first century AD said: “prophecy is given to fools…” A team of researchers have now put their heads together to challenge this by looking at the future for the fish industry up to the year 2020. They have shortened the prophecy odds by preparing six different predictions for six different scenarios, using a state-of-the-art computer model of global demand for food and feed commodities.<\/p>\n
Some of the results should not surprise.. The Chinese are moving right out in front and farmed fish gain over wild catches. Some of the most populous nations on earth will increase their consumption of fish, while ‘richer’ countries may eat less or at least not increase the fish on their plates.<\/p>\n
According to the basic, most likely scenario, the Chinese, will grow richer and eat more fish, especially high-value products. Other developing countries, particularly in Southeast Asia, will probably follow suit. Indians will be among some South Asian consumers who will increase their appetite for low-value fish at a higher rate than that of high-value products.<\/p>\n
Turning to the ‘developed’ world, aggregate fish consumption will continue to stagnate. There will be small declines in Japan and small increases in the USA, with Europe in the middle.<\/p>\n
The authors, from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington, and the WorldFish Center (WFC), Penang, predict that global, annual, per-capita consumption (15.7 kg in 1997) will be around 17 kg by 2020. But it could fall to 14 kg in the event of an extreme collapse of wild fisheries. However, if wild fisheries hold up well and fish farming keeps developing at a fast rate, consumption could rise to 19 kg.<\/p>\n
With consumption rising at a rate of about 1% per year, by 2020 the world is going to use some 28% more fishmeal and fish oil (7.92 million tonnes and 1.425 mt, respectively) than in 1997… if the industry can maintain production at the historic, 1994 record level.<\/p>\n
The total production of caught foodfish (that’s excluding fish which is reduced into material for other products) could be anything between 53 mt – 78 mt, with aquaculture producing between 41 mt – 69mt.<\/p>\n
The message is that aquaculture will grow consistently, despite environmental problems, fish diseases and water shortages. All such problems, however, would hopefully be alleviated through the development of new technologies.<\/p>\n
Such a fast pace of aquaculture development, however, cannot remain proportional to the supply of fishmeal and oil produced from wild fish stocks. Any substantial increase from this source seems improbable.<\/p>\n
J.S.Kilpatrick, (“Fish processing waste — opportunity or liability” INFOFISH International, No.5, 2003), has produced a series of graphs demonstrating the stagnation of the world’s fishmeal and fish oil production from 1990. Apart from 1998, when the big El Ni\u00c3\u00b1o devastated the anchoveta fishery of Peru and Chile, the world’s joint annual production of fishmeal and fish oil has remained within the seven mt and nine mt range.<\/p>\n
We should remember that, in order to produce such amounts, fishermen must supply the processing plants with anything between 25 mt and 40 mt of whole, industrial fish, plus the plants need fish scraps and waste from the processing of other fish. That equates to 22-35% of total, present marine fish landings.<\/p>\n
In order for these 2020 figures to materialize, the aquaculture industry would need to increase feed efficiency and move to strains of fish which could grow on feeds containing little, if any, fishmeal.<\/p>\n
So, what may increasingly determine further development of fish farming, is a dynamic combination of many factors. These include: demand and consumer preferences, the size of the market and whether it is willing and able to pay the increased prices which will be needed to cover any higher production costs. This will in turn be touched by how much wild fish is available for reduction and processing. That of course depends on new technologies to convert increasing amounts of today’s “industrial” fish into foodfish which, when turned into retail products, can hold a good price as well as retain consumer demand.<\/p>\n
According to the authors’ most probable scenario almost all of the 1.5% annual growth will come from aquaculture, much of this from developing countries. Under any scenario, China’s production is going to exceed 1\/3 of the world’s total, 2\/3 of it from aquaculture.<\/p>\n
So, assuming that the worst scenarios, for both wild fisheries and aquaculture, do not materialise simultaneously, there will be a substantial increase in foodfish production.<\/p>\n
The good news for fish producers is that prices in real terms are predicted to increase. So, high-value finfish and crustaceans could go up by 15%, low-value foodfish by 7%, and fishmeal and oil by 18%.<\/p>\n
The bad news is for the poor. Wild fisheries are not going to provide any additional employment. Overcapitalised fleets are destined to shrink. At best, some may stay as they are. Expanding aquaculture will provide employment for many, but possibly at the expense of jobs in agriculture. For example, rice-growing employs more people per hectare than fish farming. And the poor will have to pay more even for the cheapest fish.<\/p>\n
Basically, the book says that by 2020 the world’s expanding population will be getting most of, if not as much as, the fish it is used to consuming today — though the sources and presentation may differ, one way or another.<\/p>\n
The book is rich in tables and graphs of past and projected fisheries data. It has an ample bibliography and index. It is highly recommended for industry leaders and strategists, and teachers and their students in the world of fisheries.<\/p>\n
(Fish to 2020: Supply and Demand in Changing Global Market, C.L.Delgado, N. Wada, M.W.Rosegrant and S.Mijer of IFPRI, and Mahfuzuddin Ahmed of WFC. IFPRI (ifpri@cgiar.org) and WFC) (worldfishcenter@cgiar.org), 226pp, $19.95).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China may lead on land and plate by 2020<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-10541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10541"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=10541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}