We produce, eat and waste food like a drunken sailor.
Can farmed fish help us tackle global warming? Why bother? If the Earth’s food production capacity was our savings and global warming the inflation, we would manage it differently.
Here is why we need to do business unusual:
Food consumption could add nearly 1°C to global warming by 2100.
An additional agricultural area nearly twice the size of India is needed to meet global food demand in 2050.
Agricultural emissions will be 11 gigaton above the global warming target at 2oC.
A 56 percent food gap between crop calories produced in 2010 and those needed in 2050.
Of the 9.3 billion metric tons of food produced in 2020, about 1.3 billion tons went to waste.
Farmed fish the savour?
10 billion people need to produce and eat differently in 2050.
So, we turn to the ocean for solutions. As with energy, where offshore wind can provide the entire global electricity demand, farmed fish can provide the global marine food demand.
In 2012, aquaculture overtook wild fish catch. An average person now eats almost twice as much seafood as half a century ago.
A 2017 study found that widescale aquaculture utilizing much of the ocean’s coastal waters could outproduce the global demand for seafood by 100 times, according NPR.
Global production of aquatic animals was 178 million tonnes in 2020, and 36 million tonnes of algae (wet weight).
Well, this is only some 2,5% of global food demand (if we stop wasting food). But; what if we eat a lot, and I mean a lot more marine food, let’s say 2 billion tons. If we produce farmed fish closer to the potential suggested by this study, then what?
Farmed fish, good or bad?
It used to have a bad name. The Global Seafood Alliance sums it up:
“Common criticisms were related to nutrient and effluent build-ups, the impact of fish farms on local wild fisheries with respect to disease and escaping, and environmental degradation due to the site’s location.”
“However, the environmental impact of aquaculture is completely dependent upon the species being farmed, the intensity of production and the location of the farm. Additionally, new strategies and technologies have emerged and have proven that it is possible to have sustainable aquaculture.”
Area efficient food
Another study worth noting has looked at the benefits of the world’s population eating more farmed fish. The study projected the world’s food needs where the increase until 2050 is only covered by farmed fish and current meat production is kept stable.
An area of 58,000 square kilometers, a little less than the size of West Virginia, for farmed fish can provide 100 million tonnes of seafood annually. This will preserve 730 million hectares of land (double the area of India) as uncultivated land.
For more on farmed fish, the aquaculture 101 series has lots of interesting stuff.
Featured image: A fish market in Tumaco, Colombia. Fishers here experience less catch every year and jobs are hard to find.
