Aquaculture and Sustainable Food Production: Balancing Environmental and Health Impacts
Introduction:
Aquaculture, also known as fish farming, is an increasingly important solution to providing sustainable and renewable food sources as the global population grows. While traditional aquaculture feed sources involve fishmeal and oil obtained from wild fish stocks, the industry has shifted towards using crop-based feeds such as soybeans and corn. However, the environmental and health impacts of industrial and agricultural methods used to produce these crops must be addressed. Therefore, aquaculture must prioritise sustainable practices and support alternative crop production practices with a lower environmental footprint. Additionally, there is a need to balance food production with biodiversity conservation using strategies such as the sharing/sparing framework, which separates areas for human use from areas for conservation. Technological advances, such as precision agriculture and precision forestry, have enabled sustainable agricultural and forestry practices. Overall, aquaculture has the potential to provide a healthy and sustainable source of seafood if managed responsibly and sustainably.
Traditional Feed Sources
Traditionally, aquaculture feed comprises fishmeal and oil obtained from wild fish stocks. However, as demand for these resources has increased and wild fish stocks have declined, the industry has shifted towards using crop-based feeds, such as soybeans and corn. At the same time, this may seem like a more sustainable alternative, but producing these crops often involves industrial, agricultural methods that can have significant adverse environmental and health impacts.
Environmental Impacts of Crop Production
Chemical pesticides and fertilisers in crop production can lead to soil degradation, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. These impacts not only affect the environment but also have indirect health effects on agricultural workers, their families, and communities living near areas of heavy agricultural activity.
Impact on Nutritional Content
In addition to these impacts, changing the composition of aquaculture feed can also affect the nutritional content of farmed fish. When carnivorous fish are fed increasingly plant-based diets, the nutritional profiles of their products can be altered, potentially affecting human nutrition and health.
Sustainable Practices
To address these concerns, the aquaculture industry must prioritise sustainable practices and choose crops with a lower environmental footprint or support alternative crop production practices. This can include reducing chemical inputs and selecting less water-intensive crops that are less likely to cause soil degradation.
Considering the Impacts
Moreover, it is essential to consider the impacts of crop production on local communities and the environment when making decisions about resource use, food production methods, and dietary patterns. The proximity of production sites to communities is an essential factor that partly determines the extent of human exposure and resulting health impacts.
Protein Transition
Short, medium and long-term strategies must be developed to build a more resilient, sustainable, and equitable food system. These can include a global dietary shift or 'protein transition' involving reducing protein consumption among high-protein consumers and replacing some meat intake with fish and plant-based protein.
Balancing Food Production with Biodiversity Conservation
The sharing/sparing framework is a tool for evaluating how to produce an area-demanding reasonable such as food at least cost to biodiversity. The framework considers sharing and sparing as two extremes, where sharing involves integrating practices that benefit biodiversity within the area producing the goods of interest while limiting concentrates. Higher-yielding production in the smallest area is necessary to meet demand while retaining or restoring other parts of the land for conservation. The framework also allows exploring a continuum of solutions involving yields and areas under nature that are intermediate between extreme sharing and extreme sparing.
Challenges
The need for the sharing/sparing framework arises from the challenges of balancing food production with biodiversity conservation. Market-mediated factors alone may not increase the area available for natural habitat in direct proportion to any increase in yield. Thus, the sharing/sparing framework emphasises the importance of functional coupling of high-yield production and habitat conservation.
Effectiveness of Land Sparing
Conserving biodiversity is one of the most pressing issues facing humanity today. The decline of species and ecosystems threatens not only the health of the natural world but also human well-being, as biodiversity underpins essential ecosystem services such as water filtration, soil fertility, and carbon sequestration. Scientists and policymakers have proposed various conservation strategies to address this challenge, including "land sparing."
What is land sparing?
Land sparing is a conservation strategy that aims to separate areas for human use (such as agriculture and urban development) from areas for nature conservation. The idea is to concentrate human activities in small, intensively managed areas, leaving larger land areas untouched for conservation purposes.
In contrast to other conservation approaches, such as "land sharing" or "wildlife-friendly farming," land sparing assumes that intensive agriculture is the most efficient way to produce food and other resources and that dedicating land to conservation is more effective than relying on sustainable farming practices to conserve biodiversity.
Does land sparing work?
Research suggests that land-sparing can be more effective than other conservation strategies. For example, a study published in the journal Nature in 2009 found that dedicating 20% of land to conservation and intensively managing the remaining 80% for agriculture can protect more species than extensive farming or wildlife-friendly farming, which both require more land for farming activities.
Another study published in the journal Science in 2012 found that land sparing can also be more economically efficient than other conservation strategies. By focusing farming activities on a smaller land area, farmers can achieve higher yields and profits while reducing pressure on natural areas.
Critics of land sparing argue that it ignores traditional farming practices' cultural and social values and could lead to further concentration of land ownership in the hands of a few large-scale landowners. However, supporters of land sparing argue that it can be combined with other conservation strategies, such as agroforestry or organic farming, to ensure that agriculture remains socially and environmentally sustainable.
The role of technology in sustainable agriculture and forestry
Advances in technology have enabled sustainable agricultural and forestry practices. For example, precision agriculture uses data and technology to optimise crop yields and reduce waste by applying inputs only where and when needed. Precision forestry, similarly, uses technology such as remote sensing to monitor and manage forests more efficiently, reducing waste and improving yields.
Biotechnology is another area of technology that has the potential to increase sustainability in agriculture and forestry. Genetically modified crops, for example, can be engineered to be resistant to pests and diseases, reducing the need for chemical pesticides and herbicides. Additionally, genetic engineering can help crops be more drought-resistant, which can be beneficial in areas prone to water shortages. However, using genetically modified crops remains controversial and is subject to an ongoing debate.
The importance of sustainable seafood production
Seafood is an essential source of protein for millions of people worldwide, and the demand for seafood is increasing as the global population grows. However, unsustainable fishing practices, pollution, and climate change threaten the world's oceans and marine life.
Sustainable seafood production addresses these issues by ensuring that fishing and aquaculture practices are environmentally responsible, socially responsible, and economically viable. This includes implementing fishing quotas, using fishing gear that minimises bycatch, and managing aquaculture operations to minimise their impact on the surrounding ecosystem.
Certification schemes such as the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) provide independent verification that seafood has been produced sustainably. These certifications can be helpful guides for consumers who want to make more sustainable seafood choices.
Conclusion
To address the global food and nutritional security crisis, policymakers have begun to focus on the potential benefits of aquaculture as a sustainable source of protein. However, aquaculture is still in its infancy in many ways, and much work remains to be done to reduce its environmental impacts. Aquaculture has the potential to be one of the most sustainable, environmentally friendly, and scalable sources of food. Over the last few decades, the industry has made great strides as it has diversified from its reliance on fishmeal and oil to include various other seafood and non-seafood species. However, aquaculture has its challenges. As the practice becomes more popular, it will likely face increased resource competition. This can result in shifts in production methods, unsustainable practices, and negative impacts on the surrounding environment, including potential effects on human health.
Further reading:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00414-5
Fry, J.P. et al. (2016) ‘Environmental health impacts of feeding crops to farmed fish’, Environment International, 91, pp. 201–214. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2016.02.022.
Szendrő, K., Nagy, M.Z. and Tóth, K. (2020) ‘Consumer Acceptance of Meat from Animals Reared on Insect Meal as Feed’, Animals, 10(8), p. 1312. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10081312.
Balmford, A. (2021) ‘Concentrating vs. spreading our footprint: how to meet humanity’s needs at least cost to nature’, Journal of Zoology, 315(2), pp. 79–109. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/jzo.12920.
Gephart, J.A. et al. (2021) ‘Environmental performance of blue foods’, Nature, 597(7876), pp. 360–365. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03889-2.
