The new strategy document offers a number of issues that must be addressed if, as seafoodintelligence.com say, European aquaculture’s full potential is to be unlocked. These include: limited access to space and licensing; industry fragmentation, limited access to finance; pressure from imports; insufficiency of medications. In addition, the strategy suggests that stringent EU rules and regulations especially with regard to environmental protection places constraints that may give an advantage to competitors in Asia and Latin America.

Whilst there is no doubt that all these issues are relevant to the modern aquaculture industry, we believe that just one of these explains why European aquaculture is stagnating and why it will never meet the expectation of this new strategy. This is the question of space.

It is only necessary to look at a map of the world to see that Europe can never produce the volumes of fish and seafood produced elsewhere in the world. Not only is the coastline much shorter but the population is much larger. This means that space is very much at a premium and competition for what space exists is much greater. The new strategy recognises this and suggests that spatial planning has a key role to play but however effective such spatial planning proves to be, it will not create any more space.

In addition, Europe’s geographic position places it at a disadvantage in terms of producing economic species. Much of the world’s aquaculture production occurs in warmer climates where growth rates are accelerated. Equally, species such as salmon, which are important to the European market, prefer cooler water temperatures.

This combination of space and location places European aquaculture producers at a disadvantage especially in relation to finfish. No matter how advanced the proposals offered within this new strategy, the reality is that Europe will always struggle to meet its own consumer demand simply based on the issue of space.

The lack of space for significant increase in aquaculture production is one of the reasons why the EU imports so much fish and seafood. Seafoodintelligence.com asked the European Commission why they were so keen to boost aquaculture production and they replied that the heavy reliance on imports is why aquaculture is so strategically important for Europe. However, whilst we fully support any initiative to boost aquaculture production, we do not believe that it is realistic for Europe to be able to offset its shortfall in fish supply with increased aquaculture production.

Firstly, Europe is not self sufficient in its food supply. Instead, it is part of a global market place where food is produced economically in one part of the world and shipped to meet demand in another. Europe needs to import food simply because it cannot produce what consumers want. For example, Europe cannot produce enough bananas to meet demand so Europe must import them from the main production areas outside Europe. Currently, about 40% of world banana production is shipped to Europe. Yet, the European Commission is not suggesting that there should be a strategy for sustainable development of European banana production. This is because Europe does not have the space or climate suitable for massive expansion of banana farms. Unfortunately, neither does Europe have the capacity for significant aquaculture growth.

Europe imports so much fish and seafood not only because European fisheries and fish farms cannot produce enough but also because the imports are of fish and seafood that European consumers want. These fish and seafood imports are not just from aquaculture but also from wild catch fisheries. Seafoodintelligence.com highlights that the main farmed imports are salmon from Norway; prawns from SE Asia and South America and freshwater fish such as pangasius and tilapia from SE Asia. However, wild fish such as cod, Alaskan pollock, Pacific salmon plus many other species are also imported in large quantities. One of the main drivers for species like pangasius, pollock and Keta and Pink salmon is price. Consumers, especially in the current economic climate, focus primarily on value and if Europe is interesting in reducing the dependence on imports, it must be able to satisfy this demand through local production.

Yet, Europe’s plans to build for the future seem to ignore what consumers might want. The new strategy states that ‘Market conditions will shape the way in which the aquaculture industry contributes to the supply of healthy and safe food products whilst at the same time decreasing EU’s dependence on imports’. They then go on to say that ‘EU producers should position their products on the market as high value products’.

We, at Callander McDowell, would argue that this single recommendation alone will ensure that this whole strategy is likely to fail.

We have nothing against high-value products and firmly believe that the European aquaculture industry is more than capable of producing such products. However, European farmers should only invest in the production of such high value products if that is what the market and consumers want, not because an EU strategy says that that is what producers should do. Producers, who invest in high value products, are likely to be heading for a fall without the support of consumer demand.

The EU strategy suggests that high value production is justified by Europe’s environmental performance, high health standards and traceability. Unfortunately, these are factors which consumers expect as a matter of right and are not things that warrant a higher cost.

Undoubtedly, there is always a small section of the market that does want high value products and is willing to pay for them. However, such production cannot be extended to include all production since all that will happen is that this niche market will become devalued.

This is what happened in Scotland during the 1990’s and the experience has shown it is impossible to promote volume production as being special. The Scottish salmon industry tried to promote itself as being a high quality, high value industry but as production expanded, prices collapsed. This is because production exceeded the high value niche and as consumers were unable to differentiate any difference between Scottish and other salmon that merited a higher price, they chose to buy other salmon instead. This led to a trade war between Scotland and Norway as Scottish producers tried to hold onto this perceived market image. One attempt to safeguard this niche market was the proposal to establish a network of Producer Organisations to place limits on production and thereby boost prices. The idea of Producer Organisations had come from the fisheries sector where their purpose was to distribute quota. In aquaculture, the idea was to use them to regulate production but the concept was rejected internationally because it was not only ill-conceived but unworkable.

Now, this new EU strategy has resurrected the idea of PO’s as a way for aquaculture businesses to cope with market demands. This means that the strategy contains conflicting proposals. The strategy argues that EU aquaculture has stagnated and requires a major boost, especially for the production of high value products. Yet, if the market for these products is disrupted because they are not what consumers want, then the EU proposes to impose strict production controls on producers. The EU will do this even if aquaculture businesses are successfully marketing and selling their produce on their own. It seems that with a global production of 52 million tonnes of which only 1.3 million tonnes is produced in Europe, European producers are already well placed to repeat the claims of over-production that prompted the original attempt to establish aquaculture Producer Organisations.

Sadly, this new strategy seems to opt for a vision of European aquaculture that is firmly tied to what producers need rather than what consumers want. This will not release European aquaculture from its current stagnation as the industry needs to be market-driven for that to succeed.

Experience tells all: Whilst Mr Jean Weissenberger gave the presentation at the first plenary session at the SARF conference in Edinburgh, the second days presentation was given by Bjorn Hersoug of the University of Tromso. Fishupdate.com reports that Dr Hersoug has called for the aquaculture industry to learn from past experience or it risks repeating unsustainable growth followed by collapsing production and employment.

Dr Hersoug looked at the experience of aquaculture production in Norway, Chile and Vietnam. He suggested that whilst all have become major aquaculture producers, their prospects for sustainable development have varied widely.

He says that Norway has seen sustained growth of its industry over the years and is expected to show continued growth. By comparison Chile has exhibited remarkable growth but is expected to show a disastrous decline in production over the next few years. Vietnam has grown at an even greater rate but Dr Hersoug suggested that most commentators expect that Vietnamese production is not sustainable and may well collapse in the future.

We, at Callander McDowell, do not agree with Dr Hersoug’s analysis. We believe that these three examples are not comparable since they have operated under three very different time scales. It is easy to forget that the first salmon smolts were put to sea in Norway during the mid 1960’s. The Norwegian industry has had setbacks over the intervening years but has managed to recover to become the industry that Dr Hersoug has described. The Chilean industry has been producing salmon for about half the time of the Norwegian industry and has managed to show continued grow without experiencing any problem until now. However, like the Norwegian industry, it will pull through and will undoubtedly thrive. It is all too easy to highlight the problems of ISA as an example of unsustainability, but it not at all. It’s a disease issue which the Chilean industry will overcome just as the Norwegian industry has before it.

The Vietnamese aquaculture industry has expanded in an even shorter time frame and has gone from strength to strength. Again, it is too easy to suggest that it will collapse when there is no evidence to support this. Freshwater pond culture has been the mainstay of world aquaculture production but most has been for local consumption. Vietnam has targeted the international market and this has created distrust because the fish are perceived as cheap competition that might undermine traditional whitefish markets. However, every farm raised fish sold into Europe means that one less fish has to be caught from wild stocks.