20 SEP TEMBER 2022 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WA S .ORG • Category I: “Accelerated growth” denotes a production hike whose magnitude is greater than that in the previous period; a production hike that follows a production drop (or no change) also belongs to this category. • Category II: “Dampened growth” denotes a production hike whose magnitude is smaller than that in the previous period. • Category III: “Accelerated decline” denotes a production drop whose magnitude is greater than that in the previous period; a production drop that follows a production hike (or no change) also belongs to this category. • Category IV: “Dampened decline” denotes a production drop whose magnitude is smaller than that in the previous period. As illustrated in Figure 2, this categorization captures two dimensions of aquaculture growth. One dimension is production change—category I and II capture positive production changes, while category III and IV capture negative changes. Another more subtle dimension is change of production changes—category II and III capture negative changes of changes, an indication of losing growth momentum, whereas category I and IV capture positive changes of changes, an indication of gaining growth momentum. Dampened Growth in Global and Regional Aquaculture As highlighted above, world aquaculture production experienced a dampened growth in the first year of COVID-19 (Figs. 1 and 3), with the production hike in 2020 (2.8 million t) lower than that in 2019 (3.9 million t). As nearly 60 percent of world Despite disruptions caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), world aquaculture production, including aquatic animals and algae reached a record high of 122.6 million t in 2020, which was 2.8 million t more than the production in 2019 (FAO 2022).1 The production increase was nevertheless one of the lowest annual growth expansions of world aquaculture in the new millennium, albeit still compatible with a few other low-growth years. The last time when world aquaculture grew less than 3 million t per year was in the early 2000s (Fig. 1). At that time world production was less than 40 percent of its current level. Although world aquaculture growth has been slowing since the mid-2010s, the 2.8-million t production hike in 2020 was below the recent trend, with a visible gap (Fig. 1). Albeit a subpar growth performance compared to historical experiences, world aquaculture growth in 2020 (2.8 million t, 2.3 percent) was a remarkable achievement amid a 3 percent decline in the world economy during the first year of COVID-19 (IMF 2022)2, especially because aquaculture was deemed a hard-hit sector by the pandemic (FAO 2021, Love et al. 2021). The performance of world aquaculture may not be representative at the country level, however, as 90 percent of world aquaculture production came from the top ten aquaculture countries; China alone accounted for nearly 60 percent. In this article, we examine aquaculture growth performance in the first year of COVID-19 at global, regional and national levels. Our analyses are based on categorization of aquaculture growth into four patterns. Dampened Yet Still Growing: A Glimpse of the Growth Performance of Global Aquaculture in the First Year of COVID-19 Junning Cai, Giulia Galli, PingSun Leung and Xiaowei Zhou FIGURE 1. Annual growth of world aquaculture production in the new millennium. FIGURE 2. Examples of growth patterns in four categories.
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