Future food security

 OCEANS: 

In a report “Blue Papers” commissioned by the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, gave summarised scientific evidence and provide decision-makers with an overview of the challenges and opportunities for the sustainable use of ocean resources.

The report key findings is that smarter management of wild marine fisheries and marine aquaculture (mariculture) could result in a six-fold increase in food production form the ocean. This would equate to more than two-thirds of the protein needed to feed a global population expected to reach almost 10 billion people in 2050.

The report notes that food from the ocean plays a unique role in sustainable food security for five reasons: 

·         Climate change: - Many aqua food products from ocean have lower greenhouse gas foot prints compared with land based animal source food.

·         Feed efficiency: - When considering feed inputs the marine based foods are more efficient than land based foods. Species cultivated in the ocean do not require feed inputs at all.

·         Production potential: - Cultivating food from the sea is not limited by constraints such as land and water availability. Whereas the land based food production has both constraints.

·         Nutrition:- Ocean food provide multiple essential, highly bioavailable micronutrients and long chain omega-3 fatty acids which are not found in plant source foods.

·         Accessibility: - Foods from the oceans are readily available to most costal populations and are affordable, nutritious and often preferred source of protein for many low income coastal countries.

To meet the food production potential from the ocean there is need of policy shift

·         Reducing overfishing of fish stocks: - This is driven by the illegal fishing, capacity enhancing subsidies, lack of alternative livelihoods, and lack of incentives to protect the underlying resources, poor local and institutional governance and suboptimal management.

·         Sustainably expanding mariculture: - This need to be done in a manner that minimise environment and social impacts, including through the cultivation of unfed farmed species such as bivalves and seaweeds; and expand mariculture of species such as finfish and shrimp can contribute significantly to the food production, but is challenged by dependence on fishmeal and fish oil as critical feed ingredients. This highlights the importance of identifying and scaling adequate feed alternatives.