45% of wild-caught fish could be fed to farmed fish and shrimp by 2040, says report

ROME — Nearly half of the wild-caught fish harvested globally could be used to produce feed for farmed aquaculture products by 2040 if the industry were to grow exponentially in line with a roadmap developed by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), according to a report published Sept. 4. The report was published by UK-based NGO the Changing Markets Foundation on the eve of the 37th meeting of the Committee on Fisheries (COFI), held Sept. 7–11 at the FAO’s headquarters in Rome. At the biennial intergovernmental meeting, policymakers set the direction for developing the fisheries and aquaculture sectors globally. The publication has intensified debate over support for aquaculture, which involves cultivation of aquatic organisms, including plants, fish and shellfish, in marine or fresh water. Aquaculture is currently the fastest-growing food industry in the world. Since 2022, it has accounted for half of the global seafood supply, but representatives of artisanal fisher organizations attending COFI described it as a “destructive” industry. “What we found is that it really depends on what species are chosen to be farmed,” Tara Ganesh, a senior campaigner at Changing Markets Foundation, told Mongabay in Rome. “Based on that, the impact varies dramatically.” Atlantic salmon aquaculture in Tasmania, Australia. Image by rod cuthbert via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). The report, produced together with researchers at the University of British Columbia in Canada, analyzes how the use of wild-caught fish to produce fish feed would change if the aquaculture sector were to reach a “milestone” set out…This article was originally published on

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