Finnian O’Luasa, Paris Office, Bord Bia – Irish Food Board

Many of the world’s leading seafood experts exchanged knowledge during the North Atlantic Seafood Forum held on Bergen in March 2013. Of particular note was the awareness that food security will be a major challenge over the next few decades as the world population is predicted to reach 9 billion by 2050 accompanied with ever increasing middle class purchasing power.

Fish is seen to be a major contributing factor to solving the world’s protein needs for several reasons, of note being:

1. 70% of the world’s surface is covered in water but only 2% of the words protein comes from the sea.
2. The nutritional qualities of fish are a solution for both hunger and obesity, which are projected to each affect 1 billion people.
3. Fish, being cold blooded in a water environment, is a highly efficient protein converter. Without the need of diverting energy into warming blood or growing a skeletal structure to resist gravity, energy from feed can be converted directly into flesh growth.
4. The high conversion ratio of fish also means that fish farming has very low carbon emissions compared to land protein production. 
5. To quote Kofi Annan at another conference, Aquavision, held in Stavanger in June 2012: “Aquaculture has a strong potential to contribute to reducing hunger in the world”.

Salmon experts explained that salmon production would not increase significantly to follow demand in short term and prices are therefore expected to rise. Price trends for salmon over the last year acknowledge this as can be seen in the marketplace site fishpool where April 2013 spot prices are almost 50% higher than April 2012. This leads to opportunity for increased salmon production in coming years in order to fill increasing market demand not only in Europe but above all in fast growing emerging markets.