44 JUNE 2022 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WA S .ORG Perspectives onMarine Aquaculture in Europe Over the last 40 years, marine aquaculture in the Mediterranean area has had several boom-andbust periods, with high prices followed by hard crisis, with lots of success stories as well as many bankruptcies, with negative consequences sometimes affecting the stock market. In the last 40 years the company has been able to overcome all these difficulties in the best way through the exclusivity of our products and appropriate marketing strategies. But what will happen in the future? Will EU aquaculture still be competitive and sustainable compared to and competing with fish produced all over the world? Sharing the same markets, how can we compete with companies working with a different-level playing field? Until a fewmonths ago I was President of the Federation of European Aquaculture Producers (FEAP), located in Brussels. With the experience gained in that position, I will try to give a picture of the situation in Europe seafood markets and of the role that aquaculture has and will have in the next years. The FEAP provides the united voice of the European aquaculture community, representing marine and freshwater finfish. At present, the federation represents 23 countries. All member countries are European but not all of them are from the European Union. Total production of FEAP members is 2.3 million t, for an annual turnover of 13 billion Euros. In contrast with a per capita annual consumption of 25.5 kg/ yr, EU fish production from fishing and aquaculture barely covers 35 percent of the internal demand and we have to import more than 65 percent of the products consumed in the region. This number is getting even worse, due to changing food consumption habits that induced many consumers to increasingly prefer fishery products. The EU has been investing a lot in aquaculture but EU aquaculture is not growing in production. It is in fact stagnating, while aquaculture outside of the EU is growing in an impressive way, including in some European countries that are not members of the EU. For example, Norway, with its 5 million inhabitants, is able to outproduce the EU, which has more than 500 million inhabitants. Moreover, Turkey has already achieved a leadership role in Mediterranean fish production, even though it started later than other EU countries. At present, European aquaculture is ready to grow: the region has technology, know-how, the best seafood market in the world, a strong lack of seafood availability per capita in the world, and investors and resources. If Europe can solve space availability, licensing, reducing bureaucracy and working on a more complete and detailed traceability of the products, EU aquaculture will grow in an impressive way and for sure in the most sustainable way. Besides economic aspects, it should be stressed that fishery and aquaculture products are a limited annual resource in the world and they are inadequate for a series of reasons to cover the world annual demand (every year 800,000 t of EPA and DHA are missing according toWHO data). Today the EU can afford to increase or decrease its annual internal demand, responding to the citizen request for fishery products simply because we are still richer than other countries. However, in the long term, our product’s availability may not be sufficient anymore. The current 7.8 billion people in the world are expected to increase to over 10 billion by 2050 (i.e., by 30 percent). This will imply an equivalent increase in demands on water, energy and other needs, including fishery products. A simple calculation shows that the world will have to increase fish production by ~1.5 million t per year (equivalent to the Norwegian annual production) from now to 2050 to guarantee the current level of fishery products consumption worldwide. This amount of fish will not come from fishing because, as FAO has been informing us for years, fishing has by now reached the maximum sustainable limits and it is stable at around 90 million t per year. The only available option to fill the gap between production and consumption is to develop the aquaculture sector. This is potentially the solution to all the problems mentioned previously and is something that the EU has strongly believed in and economically supported for years. If the EUwill not be able to grow the aquaculture sector faster in the next years, probably we will lose the possibility, tomorrow, to consume seafood as we do today. If we are able to maintain it by just importing seafood, it will be done in some cases taking it out of the mouths of those from the poorest countries; that will not be, for sure, the most ethical and sustainable solution. This scenario must interface with a world increasingly struggling with sustainable aspects and it must cohabit with alarming climate change, harmful emissions, the lack of water and the subsoil, with a frightening demographic increase of world population, pollution of our waters from plastics and pollutants of all kinds. We need to guarantee the necessary proteins with methods that are respectful of the environment and sustainable, to preserve the future generations. We face a complex but not unsolvable challenge but it is mandatory to win it, without shortcuts. Climate change and environmental degradation are a huge threat to Europe and to the world. The European Green Deal is our roadmap for making the EU economy sustainable. We will achieve this by transforming climate issues and environmental challenges into opportunities in all policy areas and making the transition fair and inclusive for all. In the future all of this will allow us to be competitive in our markets only if a more-fair, level playing field at the global level will be achieved, and when complete traceability of products will be regulated to let every citizen in the world know exactly the story and the provenance of the products they consume. Notes Marco Gilmozzi is a biologist, diver and, for the last 40 years, a fish farmer. He is President and CEO of Cosa Fish Farm in Orbetello, Italy. He is President of OP Acquacoltura Orbetello and is a recent Past President of the Federation of European Aquaculture Producers (FEAP). Gilthead sea bream branded by Orbetello Aquaculture are known locally as orata.
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