Aquaculture by the numbers

March 31, 2000
Web posted at: 2:59 PM EST (1959 GMT)

Aquaculture represents one of the fastest growing food producing sectors, providing a product that is an acceptable supplement and substitute to wild fish and plants. By 1996, the total production of cultured finfish, shellfish and aquatic plants reached 34.12 million tons which was valued at $46.5 billion. This represents an increase of around 11.0% and 6.2% over 1995 quantity and value, respectively.

In keeping with recent trends, the increase over 1995 was higher for finfish and shellfish than for all aquatic organisms, an average of 13.6% and 7.4% for quantity and value, respectively. Much of the reported increase originated from the Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries (LIFDCs), in particular China.

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Greater allocation of natural resources for aquaculture, particularly pond and sea area in China, development and implementation of national aquaculture frameworks and holistic management to further diversify production of species and technology used continues to support further increases. The global geographical distribution of aquacultural output continues to be highly skewed towards Asia.

For all continents, except for Asia the proportional contribution of value to global production was higher than that of quantity reported. Asia accounted for 91% of the world's reported tonnage and 83.5 % of its value.

Europe was the second largest contributor with 4.7% of world production, but the higher value of cultured species, in particular the salmonids, resulted in Europe accounting for 7.8% of global value. The contributions of Africa, the former USSR area and Oceania to quantity and value were similar in 1996 and ranged between 0.3 to 0.6%.

National Production

The average global contribution of aquaculture masks the relative importance of aquaculture to national aquatic production. The contribution of aquaculture to total aquatic production varied and ranged from 14% to 62% for the top 14 producing. In 1996, Chinese aquaculture accounted for 62% of total national aquatic production, nearly twice that of either Italy, Philippines, India, France or Bangladesh. A considerably lower contribution to national aquatic production was reported for similar activities by Thailand (14%) and Indonesia (17%), United Kingdom (11%), Norway (10%) and USA (7.0%) in 1996.

Chinese Domination

Global production of aquaculture continues to be dominated by China, which in 1996 accounted for over 67.8% of world output. Because of the relatively low value of carps and seaweeds, that dominate Chinese culture, its contribution to the value of world aquaculture was lower than its contribution to quantity at 45.4%. The global ranking of countries to quantity and value varied depending on the predominance of the culture of high value species. Although Japan accounted for 4% of total world quantity , the culture of predominately high value marine finfish species such as the amberjack and shellfish such as the yesso scallop and oyster, more than doubled its world share in terms of value and made it the second largest global contributor. Similarly, the higher valued penaeid shrimps in Indonesia and Thailand and salmonids in Norway approximately doubled their proportional value contribution to global production when compared with their reported tonnage.

Source: Food and Agriculture Organization

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Food and Agriculture Organization
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