World Aquaculture Magazine -December 2021

WWW.WA S .ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • DECEMBER 2021 27 aquaculture products in a cost-effective and sustainable manner will be as important as the development of innovative production systems. Second, innovative aquaculture production systems will need to be integrated wherever possible into the food-energy-water nexus with agriculture and fisheries. Radical Transformation –Logistics, Tradeand Decarbonization Trade impacts aquaculture value chains globally and locally and always must be considered in the planning for new seafood production systems. More than 75 percent of global fisheries and more than 60 percent of fishmeal is traded. Only 7 percent of terrestrial meats are traded. Ninety percent of the world’s products are transported on the ocean. Fifty-nine percent of global food miles are accumulated by ocean transport, 31 percent by rail, and only 0.16 percent by air (Poore and Nemecek 2018). Increased volumes of trade and lower costs of transportation can have strong positive or negative effects on the seafood economies of fisheries and aquaculture. In 2010, China accounted for about 1 percent of US exports of American lobsters by value; in 2019, this exploded to 15 percent and China became the second largest destination for US lobster exports after Canada. Trade barriers come and go with the political winds and can be painful but short lived. Despite the imposition of protectionist tariffs of 37-65 percent to ensure pangasius fromVietnam could not compete with US catfish, pangasius was among the top ten seafoods consumed in the US in 2009 and competed successfully against a wide range of farmed and wild-caught white fish. Chinese exports of whole frozen tilapia to Africa have posed a challenge to the growing aquaculture production. For example, in 2013, the Chinese province of Hainan produced 441MT of tilapia and exported around 104MT. In 2013, Ghana imported close to 3MT of tilapia fromChina. Despite making the importation of farmed fish illegal, Nigerian markets have been flooded by imports of farmed Chinese tilapia and catfish due to the skyrocketing demand for fish (businessdaynigeria.com ). The Nigerian Agriculture Ministry estimated total demand at 2.6MMT. For Nigeria, FAO (2020) reported about 750MT of imports, domestic production of 800MT, with only about 200MT from aquaculture. There is a strong movement towards decarbonization of sea transport and use of renewable energy systems that will affect seafood trade globally and impact global-to-local aquaculture value chains. Shipping produces only 2-3 percent of global CO 2 emissions. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) plans to cut emissions in half by 2050 with the aim of eliminating them. A research and America, with slower growth in North America (Table 3). Europe is projected to lose population and India is projected to surpass China as the most populous country (World Population Day, 11 July 2011). Humanity will also be separated spatially and quite dramatically. Seventy percent will live in cities. The largest urban growth will occur in India, China and Nigeria. The world by 2030 is projected to have 43 megacities with more than 10 million people. Rural populations worldwide are expected to decline sharply (United Nations 2014). Humans will continue their inexorable migration to densely populated coastal cities located on the thin strip of land bounded by coastal oceans. About 40 percent of the 7 billion people today live from the coast to 100 km inland (Sale et al. 2014). Sixty percent of the world’s 39 cities with a population of over 5 million are located within 100 km of the coast, including 12 of the world’s 16 cities with populations greater than 10 million (IPCC 2018). An estimated 100 million people moved from inland to the coast of China in 20 years from 1980 to 2000 (IPCC 2007). Aquaculture offers a wide range of systems and species options, with many examples of how these have made radical transformations (Table 1). Production systems of fisheries and aquaculture at all scales must have economic viability to be sustainable. Off-farm sales (local to global exports) are essential to survival. It is well known that aquaculture farmers worldwide, even those farmers who are food insecure, develop and trade high-value species to earn income for family nutritional, educational and other needs. Seafoods are very valuable commodities. As a result, they are the most widely traded foods in the world (FAO 2020). In less than ten years, India and China have increased seafood consumption by 20MMT and predictions are that this will increase by an additional 14MMT by 2025. During this time, China became a net seafood importer and seafood prices in China equalled or exceeded products for export (Broughton and Walker 2010). As seafood demands increase in Asia and Africa, less will be exported and nations in all of the new geographies for aquaculture that have depended on imports will face greater competition for seafoods and increasingly find imports scarcer. Thus, aquaculture production must increase in these regions. As there is a strong preference for marine species in many of these countries (FAO 2020), marine aquaculture development could increase rapidly. Given these demographic trends, there are two radical transformations that will need to occur globally affecting everyone locally for aquaculture to be more important in the future of food. First, urban consumers globally, especially middle-income consumers in Asia and Africa, need seafoods from rural areas and from imports; thus value chain, logistics planning and development to move Projected distribution of world population growth to 2050 (millions) (Chin et al. 2011). Reg i ons o f t he Wo r l d 2010 2050 Europe 738 719 North America 348 447 Latin/South America 590 751 Asia 4,164 5,142 Africa 1,022 2,192 TABLE 3. Demographic shifts in the world’s population from 1950 and predicted to 2100 (millions) (Bloom 2011). Year s Wo r l d De v e l oped De v e l op i ng Coun t r i e s Coun t r i e s 1950 2,500 800 1,700 2000 6,100 1,200 4,900 2011 7,000 1,200 5,800 2050 9,300 1,300 8,000 2100 10,100 1,300 8,800 ( C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 2 8 )