Hi,
FAO has contributed a great deal to the development of aquaculture programs in various regions of the world alleviating poverty in fishing communities and lead international efforts to defeat hunger. While I was reading recent FAO Report on Aquaculture that Peter Nelson brought to the attention of the Seafood Discussion List and Pam Tom sited, and the discussion by Peter Howgate, I thought about some suggestions to make to the policy makers at FAO Aquaculture Service of Fishery Resources Division.
I would like to see the indigenous aquaculture operations include not only production of fish to feed local people with animal protein, but also economic return to the local people through increased employment and assistance in marketing of value-added products, resulting from effective infrastructure developed for further fish processing technology. Economic incentive to local people and government will bring about more attention to the FAO efforts from the country, resulting in closer collaboration between the regional government and UN operations. Instead of shipping commodities, production of value-added products as well as utilization of byproducts for export to the international market places should follow the regional aquaculture operations for the successful long term fishery management.
Though large portion of its production is directed toward domestic consumption, Chinese aquaculture and processing industries are now paying much attention to various new product development and byproduct utilization programs for international markets as the industries become larger (70% of world aquaculture production is from China as Peter Howgate pointed out from FAO Report). Accordingly, Ministry of Science and Education of China has allocated large amount of research funds on these fields as a part of 11th 5 year Economic Plan.
Kim, Jin Moon
Professor
School of Food Science and Technology
Southern Yangtze University
Wuxi, Jiangsu Province
China
jmkim@sytu.edu.cn jinmoonkim01@yahoo.com
P Howgate <phowgate@clara.co.uk> wrote: Aquaculture and fish supplies
Peter Nelson drew attention to a news release about aquaculture production
and its contribution to supplies of fishery products and Pamela Tom has
given the internet site of the full report on which the news release was
based. The Report provides detailed discussions of aquaculture production
and various issues relating to it. I have followed the changes in supplies
of fishery products for many years and especially the phenomenal growth in
the contribution of aquaculture products to total supplies in the last 2
decades or so. My main interest has been in the contribution of aquaculture
products to food supplies with a secondary interest in implications for fish
processing and for quality assurance and safety. I would like to make some
observations on the subject which I hope will clarify and amplify some of
points drawn out in the FAO report.
Firstly the source of the data. The complete database is available from the
FAO Fisheries Division as Fishstat. This has the raw data from which tables
in the Fisheries Yearbooks are produced, but it sufficient for the following
discussion on the global situation to consult the summary tables available
at: ftp://ftp.fao.org/FI/STAT/SUMM_TAB.HTM. Click on Latest Summary Tables
for tables for the years 1995-2004 inclusive and you can get summaries for
earlier years from the archived summary tables. The table for aquaculture
production shows a production of 45.47 million metric tonnes (mt) in 2004.
However the State of World Aquaculture: 2006 states in Chapter 2 that
production was 59.4 mt. The discrepancy is due to the inclusion of aquatic
plants in the report's total, but not in the summary tables of the fisheries
data. This is just a difference in viewpoint. The database for capture
fisheries is concerned with production of aquatic animals, (other than
mammals), and it is reasonable not to include the plant data in the
aquaculture production tables to make them comparable. (The full capture
data in Fishstat records that some 0.77mt of plants were harvested from the
wild, but this is negligible compared with capture of aquatic animals
animal). Also presenting data on animal products only is more relevant to
considerations of fish as a food commodity. The edible portion of animal
fishery products is overwhelmingly muscle tissue to be compared with what is
eaten of land animals and of poultry.
The data on capture fisheries show a production of 95.0 mt in 2004 of which
34.8 mt was not used for human food leaving a nett production of 60.2 mt for
human food. Aquaculture produced 45.5 mt and I would expect from the nature
of the material and its production that all was used for human food. (I can
not find in any of the FAO data bases records of any aquaculture products
being used for non-human food purposes). Thus the total aquatic animal
production used directly for human food - some is used indirectly as fish
meal in food animal feeds - in 2004 was 105.6 mt of which aquaculture
contributed 43%. These figures accord with those quoted in the news release
which clearly refer to aquaculture animal production, i.e. excluding plants.
In the subsequent discussion I will use just the animal production data for
aquaculture.
As well as noting the contribution of aquaculture to supplies in 2004 it is
instructive to note trends in production. The FAO data goes back to 1950 and
since then total production from capture fisheries has increased
approximately linearly though with quite large deviations in some periods
which can be largely attributed to fluctuations in pelagic catches that go
mainly for reduction for fish meal. The data for the production from capture
fisheries going for human food also increase linearly with less fluctuation
at a rate of approximately an increase 1mt/year up to 1997. Since then the
trend is for supplies to decrease at a rate of 0.45mt/year. The FAO report
on aquaculture points out the notable increase in aquaculture production in
the last 2-3 decades making aquaculture the fast growing food production
system in this time. The shape of the growth curve is shown Figure 1 on the
first page of chapter 2 of the FAO report, the curve for volume of
production. (The data in the figure are for total production including
plants, but the shape is not substantially different for animal products
only). There is not a simple mathematical expression to model this growth
but splitting it into 3 linear phases fits the data very well. The first
phase is from 1950 to 1980 when production increased by 0.12mt/year. I
understand that data in this period are not reliable and think they are
largely extrapolations by the FAO statisticians. The data from 1980 onwards
are more reliable and until 1991 show an increase of 0.93mt/year. There is
an obvious break in 1991 and from then the increase has been at a rate of
1.52mt/year. The increase in aquaculture production more than compensates
for the decrease from capture fisheries and if the trends persist at the
calculated values then aquaculture will provide 50% of supplies of fishery
products for human consumption by 2009.
Though supplies have been increasing over the years so has the world's
population and a crude measure of the supply per person is given by dividing
the current production by the current population. In 1950 the crude supply
was 6.4kg/person/year almost entirely derived from capture fisheries. The
growth in supplies from capture fisheries more than kept up with population
growth and by 1980 was 10.6kg/person/year with a further contribution from
aquaculture of 1.0kg/person/year. From 1980 to 1998 supplies from capture
fisheries just about kept pace with population growth and the average supply
from that source in that period was 10.6 kg/person/year. Since then the
supply capture fisheries has decreased to 9.4 kg/person/year in 2004. The
extrapolated figure for 2010 is 8.3kg/person/year. However, production from
aquaculture has more than kept pace with population growth and its
contribution increased to 7.1kg/person/year in 2004 making a total supply of
16.5kg/person/year. It must be realised that the FAO data is expressed as
'live weight equivalents', that is the weight of the entire fish no matter
how it is landed - whole, gutted, H&G, frozen fillets, or whatever. The
returns of landed weights are corrected for yields as required by FAO to
give the published data. This means that the amount of edible portions of
fish consumed is less than the supply of 16.5kg/person/year.
The numbers quoted above are average values for supplies on a world basis,
but FAO prepares detailed data on consumption of various food commodities
including fish and Fishery Products. The latest relevant printed compilation
listed on the FAO site is: Fish and fishery products. World apparent
consumption statistics based on Food Balance Sheets (1961-2001), FAO
Fisheries Circulars - C821Rev.7, 2004. These tables prepare balance sheets
of supplies of fish - again live weight basis - smoothed over a 3 year span
for individual countries taking into account production, changes in stocks,
and balance of imports and exports giving what the FAO call the 'apparent
consumption' of fish. A summary of the data is available at the site quoted
above. The latest summary table there lists mean data for the years
2001-2003 and data for previous years are in the archived sets. The data in
tables of consumption in Chapter 4 of the FAO report are generally
consistent with these summary tables, (though I do not understand the part
of the heading in brackets about original data being in grams/day), but
there are inconsistencies with data in Table 5. As I have pointed out above
the values in the FAO apparent consumption tables show supplies, not the
quantities consumed, but other sources of data on fish consumption might be
based on actual material consumed and will be lower than the FAO data for
supplies. The proportion of edible tissue in the supply will depend of the
mix of products in the supply - vertebrate fish, crustacea, bivalve
molluscs, squid - but will be less than 50% overall. The first line of
Figure 5 of Chapter 4 gives the per capita supply for Australia as 12.4kg
whereas the previous Table 1 shows it as 22.3. A further column shows the
per capita consumption as 10.9kg which is reasonable for a supply of 22.4kg,
but not for 12.4kg. Further down the table the supply for China is shown as
34.9kg which is much higher than the value shown in Table 1 of 22.5kg, the
value shown for consumption is even higher at 36.2! The table shows for
Korea that consumption is about twice the supply. Chapter 4 discusses
supplies of fishery products compared with supplies of meat, but it must be
realised that FAO data on supplies of meat and poultry are based on carcass
weight, not live weight. It is not clear if figures for meat supplies quoted
in the chapter are on this basis.
FAO apparent food consumption statistics do not show the amount of fish
tissue consumed, but they do show an estimate the amount of protein
contributed to the diet by fish and fishery products. This is based on
yields of edible flesh from the various components of the supply mix and the
protein contents of the edible portions. The data are available on-line as
part of FAOSTAT, and they show that in 2003 fish supplied, on a world basis,
4.37g/person/day of protein compared with 13.38g/person/day from land
animals and poultry, 25% of the supply of muscle protein. There is a further
contribution of animal protein in the form of milk and eggs. This is the
overall, world wide, figure; contributions of fish to animal protein
supplies vary widely by country from almost none in land-locked countries
like Afghanistan to almost all in island communities such as the Maldives.
Also the proportion of fish supplies that come from aquacultured products
will differ among countries, but the FAO databases do not attempt to
differentiate between the origins of supplies.
Dan Desmond asked about the contribution of aquaculture to supplies in the
USA. The figures in the summary tables show that aquaculture production in
the USA is about 9% of the total supplies of fish for human consumption,
22.6kg/person/year mean for the 3 year span 2001-2003. Assuming no, or
insignificant, exports aquaculture products from the USA then this is the
proportion of home based aquaculture products to supplies. Not a lot, but
not insignificant. The USA also imports aquaculture products. The points
raised by Gleyn Bledsoe are discussed in Chapter 4 of the FAO report.
On a global basis aquaculture is more than making up for decreasing supplies
from capture fisheries. This to be welcomed, but a word of caution;
aquaculture production in China dominates the scene, 70% of the world
production, and the contribution of aquaculture to food supplies is very
patchy across countries.
Peter Howgate
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter A. Nelson"
To: "Seafood HACCP Discussion List"
Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2006 10:56 PM
> Here's a new report from the FAO Sub-Committee on Aquaculture:
>
> http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000383/index.html
>
> "Nearly half the fish consumed as food worldwide are
> raised on fish farms rather than caught in the wild, says a new report
> from FAO."
>
>
> Cheers, Pete
>
>
> Peter A. Nelson, Ph.D.
> Marine Advisor
> California Sea Grant
> 2 Commercial Street, Suite 4
> Eureka, California 95501
>
> Adjunct Professor
> Dept Fish. Biol., Humboldt State University
>
> Tel 707.443.8369
> Fax 707.445.3901
> panelson@ucdavis.edu
>
>
---------------------------------
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