World Aquaculture Magazine - June 2021

24 JUNE 2021 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WA S .ORG in the white hats dedicated to solutions to save the world.” By hyping aquaculture are we losing our abilities to obtain an accelerated social contract with publics in aquaculture’s new geographies? So, here are some alternative views from a couple of “older” aquaculture professionals that you may like…or not. Once COVID-19 is smashed; you can have your favourite beverage with us (I’ll have a beer, Thierry wine), and we can talk/argue about these together. We do miss doing that with you! Use of FAOGlobal Data Every two years we relish getting in our inbox the FAO’s State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (FAO 2020) review (just imagine howweird that sounds to others outside of our “bubble,” especially your teenagers). FAO data are fun to play with but always raise more questions than they answer, which is what they are supposed to do. Pauly and Zeller (2017) and Edwards et al. (2019) are among the most thoughtful scholars questioning (and helping… well, sometimes) the FAO in this regard. Even the FAO is critical of its own enterprise, as it is reliant on member countries, stating in FAO (2020), “A lack of reporting by 35-40 percent of the producing countries, coupled with insufficient quality and completeness in reported data, hinders FAO’s efforts to present an accurate and more detailed picture of world aquaculture development status and trends.” Thus, we use FAO data as a general guide only. Too many of our colleagues and decision-makers use them as gospel or use them to color in the background and basis of their studies or actions, and at worse they are used to inform local decisions. These dysfunctions, plus new, emerging forms of aquaculture fantasy and hype mixed with the older ones versus what we see as reality are what we’d like to explore in this article. Five Local-to-Global Reality Checks in Animal Aquaculture RealityCheck#1: Animal aquaculture is not growing everywhere. Ocean food production is estimated to comprise only 4-6 percent of all human foods today (Costa-Pierce 2016). Costello et al. (2020) estimated that ocean foods represented 17 percent of the current production of edible meat. Fully 89 percent of all global animal aquaculture production is in Asia (60 percent of global aquaculture is in China), with only 3 percent in Africa, 4 percent in Europe, 5 percent in the Americas and virtually nothing in Oceania. Seven of the top ten aquaculture producing nations in the world are in Asia (China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand). FAO (2018, 2020) data show that for all of the billions of dollars/euros invested, aquaculture production has not increased in the EU (Norway is not part of the EU), the Americas, nor in Oceania; really nowhere else at a scale to get the attention of policymakers or the world outside of Asia (Tables 1 and 2). The USA and Canada are minor producers ranked number 16 and 20 in the world in 2018 (FAO 2020, OECD 2020). Exceptions in the “new geographies for aquaculture” over the past 2-3 decades are Norway, Chile and Egypt. Do they point the way as examples for the future in aquaculture’s new geographies? FIGURE 1. Total consumption of meat (in million metric tons) in different regions and globally (inset) (Godfray et al. 2018). Note that world meat consumption reached 300 million metric tons by 2010 and has continued to increase. TABLE 1. Animal aquaculture Production by Regions and the Leading Producers (numbers in million metric tons (MMT)) (FAO 2020). World Asia Africa Americas Europe Oceania Inland 51.3 47.7 1.9 1.2 0.5 0.0 Marine 30.8 25.1 0.3 2.6 2.6 0.2 Total 82.1 72.8 2.2 3.8 3.1 0.2 China (47.6) Egypt (1.6) Chile (1.3) Norway (1.4) Notes: Marine includes coastal and brackishwater aquaculture. Less than 0.1 MMT is reported by FAO as “zero.” TABLE 2. FAO (2020) Estimates of EU and North America Animal aquaculture Production over 23 Years in million metric tons (MMT). Years EU Production North American Production 1995 1.2 0.5 2000 1.4 0.6 2005 1.3 0.7 2010 1.3 0.7 2015 1.3 0.6 2018 1.4 0.7