Beware of soothsayers predicting the future. But we can be certain that people and animals will still need feeding; just as certain as we are of death and taxes.
When scientists “review” literature, a recurring complaint is they regurgitate tired data using less than accurate models. A good sign here (“Food security: feeding the world in 2050” is tackled in a dedicated issue of the journal of ‘Biological Proceedings’, the Royal Society*) is that the references cited generally seem to be very recent.
Importantly, strategies and data which fishermen have been trying to put on the table for years are now getting into the research agenda and given due weight. For example, if you “politically” reduce the catch of big predators (such as cod) the cod is left unfettered to cull victims. This may leave more young of the victim stock ready to stage a biological fight back and the stock booms again, perhaps as we saw from 2000 with the whiting resurgence and now mackerel.
The hundreds of pages of research cover human population growth and distribution, diet and health, agriculture, land and water use, and fisheries – marine, land-based and aquaculture.
Local and global
More megacities (of 20+ million people) will emerge mainly in coastal areas, so richer and time-poor customers will buy wild, farmed and inland fish. However, while at the very least 10 million tonnes per annum (mntpa) of inland are produced, hinterland logistics require serious attention now.
Global processing for added-value profits is being inexorably pushed by a diminishing number of ever-more dominant international food companies.
These also want grouped suppliers, not the common multiplicity of raw material producers with a few workers (a four-man trawler or “2.6” full-timers on the average fish farm).
This forced grouping may either threaten prices for the seller or improve their negotiating position. When WF looks at fruit and veg and dairy producers, even after grouping, prices are often driven down by the conglomerates and supermarkets.
Yet, by its very nature the perishability of fish need not be a problem but an advantage to be exploited for local sales. This can be helped if local producers collaborate logistically from sea to river and vice versa.
More local sales in megacities (most are within 60km of the coast) cut out long land and sea reefer costs charged by hauliers. Cooperatives ring a big bell here: Italy, Spain or India still have giant, often part state-owned, cooperatives. Such cooperatives can provide or raise the finance to invest and the votes to lobby government for more rural cold chains for bi-directional sales and secure holding storage during gluts.
There is a paradox. The research says world population is a key driver of seafood demand and fisheries development and it is producing migration to coastal areas, so that by 2020 “some 60% of the world population (about 6 billion) will live” there.
By 2050, 70% will live in urban centres. So there will be rich-poor, food-price pressures, yet the “poor” market is enormous. If local sales profit margins are buttressed by avoiding long logistics, WF suggests this “market of the poor” offers good jobs and a secure outlet for producers and retailers.
An alliance between producers for wild or farmed swaps for retailing across their mutual networks of outlets and cold chains, can also create more part-time worker production and jobs.
The research says that the “vast majority of the households that depend on inland fisheries are farmers or fisher–farmers who have traditionally engaged in seasonal farming and fishing”. It adds that fish “provides more than 1.5 billion people, particularly in low-income food-deficit countries, with almost 20% of their average per capita intake of animal protein”.
Some 400 million poor people depend critically on fish for their food, particularly in small island states, Bangladesh, Ghana and in the lower Mekong basin, it adds.
Farm food
The research, in relation to how much low-value fish is needed to produce higher-value farmed fish, suggests this is a not a food security issue. But it does say that there will probably be more small fish consumption at the local retail end.
Central and South American countries have lots of room to catch up with Asia and Africa in terms of inland production.
Latin America of course is today’s major supplier of fishmeal raw material. The research says in 2008 some 90% of available fish oil and 71% of the fishmeal was consumed in aquaculture. But higher-value markets (WF suggests ‘small fish with everything’) could derail that and there will not be enough fishmeal and oil to meet “ever-increasing demands for aquafeed ingredients”.
The shift to meat by growing middle classes worldwide will also increase meal demand as well as for pet food production.
The chef is still putting his hat on as far as how much more ‘healthy’ fish people will buy, as education spreads and tens of millions get richer.
However, reports from the US and Japan suggest rising fish prices mean consumers are eating less fish and buying ‘cheaper’ fish and oil supplements for their omega fixes. Good news for multinational processing companies, but producers need new sales to local schools, factory canteens and restaurants, as well as partnering with lucrative recreational anglers, who put catch back, prop up the local bar, book hotel rooms and hire local boats.
China is past the 50% farmed level. The research says by 2015 farmed will account for more than 50% of global aquatic food. It is wisely cautious, indeed almost neutral, on gauging how far wild catch is sustainable or not, at around 82mntpa of a theoretical pool of 100mntpa.
Fishermen’s evidence, that wild crustaceans and cephalopods are increasing and highly sustainable, are backed by the report.
Christophe Béné, a report co-author, says floodplains, rivers and lakes can offer all-round supplies and an almost daily income – “fishing plays a critical role as a ‘bank in the water'”. That applies to all our water assets, which should be kept safe from speculators, in robust health, well managed and equitably shared, from the Tibetan plateau to the great deltas of Asia and from Disko Bay to the Bohai Sea.
* http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1554.toc
