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| This is our future! |
As the population of the world growth larger, the
aquaculture seems to have the same reaction to this changes. The aquaculture
sector has grown for about 8 per cent anually over the past 20 years which is
faster than any food sector. Today about 60 million tonnes of fish, mussels,
crab and other aquatic organisms are farmed around the world each year. This is
almost equal to the amount of ocean fish and seafood captured in the wild,
which totalled 78.9 million tonnes in 2011.
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| Something's fishy.. |
Asia, particularly China, is the most important aquaculture
region, currently supplying 89 per cent of global production. Aquaculture will
continue to grow strongly and thus make a significant contribution to providing
the global population with valuable protein. An advantage of aquaculture is
that much fewer feedstuffs are needed to farm fish and seafood than beef and
pigs. It takes 15 times as much feed to produce 1 kilogram of beef as to
produce 1 kilogram of carp.
Aquaculture is thus a resource-efficient method of producing
protein-rich food from animals. Current studies investigating likely
developments to 2050 indicate that aquaculture is capable of satisfying the
world population’s growing need for fish. This ongoing growth, however, must
not come at the cost of the environment or the climate. It is problematic that
aquaculture still requires large amounts of wild fish, which is processed into
fish meal and fish oil and used as feed. Although the volumes of these
commodities have been stagnating for years, in some cases they still make use
of fish stocks which are not managed in a sustainable manner.
Aquaculture can thus still be a contributor to the problem
of over-fishing. Efforts are now being made to reduce the amount of fish meal
and fish oil used in fish farming, not least because prices have soared as a
result of high demand in China. Many research groups are developing alternative
types of fatty, protein-rich feed from potatoes and rapeseed. In many cases
aquaculture production is still not sustainable. Facilities require too much
energy and generate nutrient-rich effluent which is often channeled into rivers
and coastal waters in an untreated state. The waters then become
over-fertilized, causing algal bloom and oxygen-deprived dead zones. Scientists
are now developing methods to analyse the full life cycle of aquaculture
facilities – life cycle assessments. For some time now the industry has been
testing products for their environmental compatibility, embracing all aspects
from the extraction of the raw materials through to recycling. The intensive
rearing of carp and shrimps in ponds is considered very harmful. It scores
extremely poorly in the life cycle assessment because it uses too much feed,
produces nutrient-rich effluent, and consumes large amounts of energy.
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| This is a sample. Cannot be consumed. |
Yet in recent years environmental awareness has also become
more widespread in the aquaculture sector. A change of thinking is evident,
particularly in the industrialized nations which import large volumes of fish
from Asia. Increasingly traders and customers are demanding goods which comply
with environmental standards. For some years there have been sustainability
certificates for marine capture fisheries, and products bearing this label are
very much in demand. Soon the “Aquaculture Stewardship Council” certificate, a
seal of approval for aquaculture operations, will be appearing on European
markets. Traders and producers wishing to have this certificate must undertake
to protect species, the environment and the water in farmed areas, and comply
with a high level of social standards. We have an opportunity to gear the
further expansion of aquaculture towards sustainability. Current environmental
problems, over-fishing and climate change make this a matter of urgency.
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