FISH PRICES RISE QUICKLY AS DEMAND GROWS

 FISH PRICES RISE QUICKLY AS DEMAND GROWS

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations predicts that over the next ten years, prices would rise by about a quarter due to increasing demand for seafood and sluggish development in fisheries and aquaculture production (FAO).

It projects that global fish production will increase from its present level of 179 million metric tonnes (MT) to roughly 204 million MT in 2030, according to its report "The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2020" (also known as SOFIA 2020). While this will reflect a rise of about 15%, the pace of growth for the period of 2007–2018 was a considerably more dynamic 27%.

According to SOFIA, aquaculture will continue to be the primary factor in the rise of global fish output, continuing a long-standing trend that will see it contribute 109 million MT in 2030, an increase of 32 percent or 26 million MT over 2018. However, it predicts that from 2019 to 2030, aquaculture's average annual growth rate will drop from 4.6 percent in 2007 to 2018 to 2.3 percent. It contends that this will be consistent with stricter environmental laws, decreased water availability and acceptable production sites, higher outbreaks of diseases affecting aquatic animals, and declining productivity improvements in aquaculture.

It further anticipates that new fisheries and aquaculture reforms and policies that China will implement as part of its Thirteenth Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) will slow down the expansion of those industries in the nation.

The majority of the world's farmed tilapia, a freshwater white fish, is produced in China, but it is also importing other species, like salmon and shellfish. According to the FAO, the country's consumption of oysters and mussels is increasing at a rate of 20% annually, making China a primary market for more expensive shellfish and causing a shortage elsewhere. As supplies from France remain low as a result of a virus that has killed the nation's young stock, oyster prices, which have more than doubled over the previous three years, are anticipated to increase further in 2013.

Northeast of London oysterman Richard Haward stated that demand from China and Hong Kong as well as a global supply constraint had driven up prices. According to the FAO, increased fish consumption is a result of urbanization and the rise of supermarkets in emerging countries. "The product development, including ready meals and clean fillets, greatly facilitates fish consumption," said Audun Lem, a fish expert at the FAO. Due to illness and high feeding costs in the aquaculture business, rising Asian demand has been combined with insufficient availability for several important species.

Due to increasing demand from producers of sashimi and sushi as well as the canned tuna sector, the price of tuna, one of the most widely traded fish species, has increased by 12% in the past year to a record high. Smaller captures have occurred at the same time. Another widely traded species, shrimp, has had a price increase of 22% during the same period as supplies have been impacted by the disease in Southeast Asia and a decrease in natural harvests. While salmon prices have increased by 27%, they are still well below record highs.