iConnectHub
Access
Login/Register
Supplier Login
VENTURES into productivity-enhancing technologies including those for water use, breeding, hatchery practices and feedstuff innovation will result in improved farmed-fish production by as much as 4.14 percent per year through 2022, according to FAO and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Growth in this sector means a further boost in food nutrition in Asia and Africa.
“The primary reason for increased optimism is that there is ample room for catching up with more productive technologies, especially in Asia, where many fish farmers are small and unable to foot the hefty capital outlays the industry requires to expand output without running into resource constraints,” said Audun Lem, a senior official at FAO’s Fisheries and Aquaculture Policy and Economics Division and one of the lead authors of the 120-page report.
Africa, with formidable water resources, should also host ongoing rapid growth of more than 5 percent a year, the fastest in the world but building on a very low current base level, according to the report.
Aquaculture is a young industry compared to livestock farming and has grown from nothing in 1950 and to a record production of 66.5 million tonnes in 2012, up almost 30-fold since 1970. About 50 percent of the $127 billion in global fish exports in 2011 came from developing countries, which receive more net revenue from the fish trade than from their exports of tea, rice, cocoa and coffee combined, Mr Lem said.
The report also said that consumption of farmed fish surpassed captured fish in 2014. While consumption plateaued in the mid-1980s, it will pick up by 5 percent over the next decade. This will be brought about by reduced waste, as well as better gear reducing unwanted bycatch and improved fisheries management.