26 JUNE 2015 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WAS.ORG farms that produce for either international or domestic markets. Background The hypothesis has been advanced that better management practices will reduce resource use and thereby lessen negative environmental impacts and increase profitability in aquaculture (Boyd et al. 2013). If this hypothesis can be more broadly accepted, there will be greater incentive for more producers of high-value products to seek performancebased certification and for producers supplying markets in developing countries to adopt aquaculture improvement programs. Most aquaculture production for domestic markets in developing countries is of low-trophic level species traditionally produced in fertilized ponds, while better practices and certification programs tend to focus on feed-based aquaculture, but this need not be the case. The investigation of aquaculture performance must extend to species such as the carps that are so important to the food supply in many developing countries. Markets for some species often are negatively impacted by fluctuations in production and price as a consequence of crop failures attributable mainly to losses from disease. Aquaculture improvement programs and certification, both of which emphasize good health management practices, could lessen, delay or reduce the likelihood of crop failure attributable to diseases. If this hypothesis also can be accepted, there will be greater interest in responsible aquaculture of internationally-traded species by large-scale buyers, who seek more stable supplies. An excellent illustration of how better practices can improve performance in all aspects of food production (Clay 2008) is depicted in Figure 1. The left-hand histogram represents the current level of performance; it is broad based with a low peak. Improving practices would compress the histogram resulting in a higher peak and shifting the entire distribution towards better performance as illustrated by the right-hand histogram. There would be producers performing much better than others but the overall performance of the sector would improve and there would be fewer poor performers. Shell (2013) emphasized that censuses of agriculture by the US Department of Agriculture contain a plethora of information on the efficiency (or lack thereof) of US agriculture. Many other countries have similar data collections on agriculture. However, Shell bemoaned the failure of farmers, researchers, and decisionmakers to take advantage of this information to make agriculture more efficient. To date, no such database for aquaculture exists in the United States or elsewhere. The closest thing to it is the FAO database on global fisheries and aquaculture production. Boyd and McNevin (2015) used FAO fisheries and aquaculture statistics and information from the scientific literature, usually from studies at research stations rather than farms, to estimate the efficiency of aquaculture resource use and the contribution of aquaculture to negative environmental impacts. Although this approach provided global estimates of resource use and efficiency, it was possible to provide only rough estimates of resource use efficiency for individual sectors of aquaculture. Moreover, there is simply insufficient farm-level information to provide a numerical scale of performance to support development of the graphical concept of aquaculture performance shift (Fig. 1) and to decide upon the appropriate position of “acceptable” on that scale. There is one notable exception to this trend, the Global Salmon Initiative (GSI). The GSI was created by 17 salmon aquaculture companies that represent some 70 percent of global production. The companies committed to have all of their combined production certified by the ASC by 2020, realizing that sustainability is a precompetitive issue. Moreover, the reputation of the worst producers affects the reputation of the entire sector and this in turn affects producers’ social license to operate, expand their operations and gain access to markets. As a result, the group decided to share their information about key impacts: which practices reduce impacts and which don’t, what investments are required, what is the payback period and what is the return on investment. The GSI has created a database to allow the 17 companies to share information on better practices and have regular discussions among member companies to discuss issues and trends that are affecting efforts to produce more sustainable salmon products. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has initiated an effort to collect data, based on indicators outlined below, that could provide this information. The WWF was successful in convening large numbers of stakeholders in the Aquaculture Dialogues process to identify performance targets and standards for aquaculture certification by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council. This effort stimulated interest by WWF offices in the major aquaculture-producing countries and the assistance of these offices will be invaluable for the collection of data on production aquaculture. The overall objective is to create a greater awareness of the distribution of farm performance FIGURE 1. Illustration of improvement in environmental performance of aquaculture through adoption of better practices. Modified from Clay (2008).
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjExNDY=