378 Fish as feed inputs for aquaculture – Practices, sustainability and implications
Other papers in this fisheries technical paper provide ample information on the
nature and extent of the use of wild fish as feed in aquaculture worldwide. Data
on culture technologies, on the status of fish stocks and on environmental impacts
dominate. However, there is little data available about the human dimensions in the use
of wild fish as feed. This makes an analysis of the impact on the poor and food insecure
extremely difficult.
Given the shortage of data worldwide – particularly that needed to identify social
consequences – this report is limited to attempting to develop global quantitative
estimates in two areas; the first concerns the “food impact” and the second, the
“income impact”.
The paper will develop an idea of the “food impact” by estimating the number of
food insecure who might have benefited if fish had been used as food instead of as feed.
This will be done simply by considering the potential supply per caput (live-weight
equivalent) that fish used as feed could have provided if supplied as food. It will also
develop an idea of the “income impact” by estimating the number of poor who earn an
income under the present practice and comparing it with what the number could have
been had fish not been used as aquaculture feed.2.2 The report
As the focus of this analysis is on the poor and the food insecure, the report starts with
a brief section about them and about the nature of the strategies used to ameliorate
their situation. This is followed by a brief and general review of the impacts of
aquaculture on food production and poverty. An analysis of the impacts on the poor
and undernourished of the use of fish as feed in aquaculture then follows. The analysis
is divided into two parts. The first concerns the use of fish obtained in reduction
fisheries, while the second looks at the food and income impacts of using fish obtained
from bycatches and/or from excess landings of small pelagic species.
The paper ends with a discussion of policies that might be able to address the
negative consequences of using wild fish as aquaculture feed while, simultaneously, not
harming the poor and undernourished.- POVERTY AND FOOD SECURITY
Following the Second World War, the number of sovereign states grew as colonies
became independent. The international community soon realized that several of the
newly formed nations needed technical and economic aid if their populations were
to escape poverty and food insecurity. However, progress was uneven during the
following decades and in 1996, the international community, assembled at the FAO
headquarters in Rome, agreed to increase and improve these efforts with the aim of
halving the number of the world’s hungry by 2015^3.
(^3) The World Food Summit (WFS) held in Rome in November 1996 at which Heads of State and
Government, or their representatives, adopted the Rome Declaration on World Food Security and
the WFS Plan of Action and pledged their political will and their common and national commitment
to achieving food security for all and to an ongoing effort to eradicate hunger in all countries, with an
immediate view to reducing the number of undernourished people to half their level no later than 2015.
(Declaration of the World Food Summit: 5 years later).