The market
The global market for breeding fish and edible aquatic plants was evaluated at $ 106 billion in 2008. Over a period of 38 years (1970-2008), the growth of fish farming has maintained a constant increase of 6.6 % According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Since 2008, there is more money earned with fish raised in ponds and tanks than fish caught in rivers and seas, which are evaluated at $ 94 billion, including a record of 10 billion tonnes from interior waters. Together, captured fisheries and aquaculture provided 142 million tonnes of protein in the world. The value of the farm is slightly higher than that of the wild harvest which, in volume, represents 46 % of all the fish consumed. There is still a lot of room for improving productivity. Annual production per person is 172 tonnes in Norway, which is the highest level in the world. China is lagging behind with 6 tonnes and only 2 tonnes in India. Aquaculture is the sector of food production of animal origin which is experiencing the fastest growth and one of the few to go beyond population growth. There are 220 species of fish and molluscs and crustaceans raised in fish farming. China is the largest producer in the world with 62 % of global fish farming in volume and 51 % in value, and mainly focuses on carp. Latin America is experiencing the highest average annual growth, 21.1 % in almost four decades, mainly with Tilapia from Africa. Africa is absent from the scene, even if the continent is home to around 25 % of the world's biodiversity of freshwater fish. In the past, leading countries like France, Spain and Japan have decreased in their production in the past decade. The consumption of farmed fish per capita increased from 700 g in 1970 to 17 kg in 2008. Fish represented 15.7 % of worldwide consumption of animal proteins and 6.1 % of all proteins consumed. Employment in the sector has experienced substantial growth, with an increase of 3.6 % per year since 1980. The number of people who practice aquaculture directly. For each person employed, approximately three jobs are created in secondary activities, which brings the total to 180 million jobs worldwide, an increase of 167 % compared to 1980. Thus, employment growth and production exceeds that of the world's population.
Innovation
The growth of aquaculture is increasingly hampered by the lack of fresh water. On the other hand, many very expensive species are carnivores who need fish flour to eat. While soy flour costs between $ 350 and $ 400, fish flour still costs more than $ 1,000. The argument is that it is not logical to kill the fish to feed them, you have to eat them directly, which contributes to better food security in the world. Fish raised together on farms consume massive quantities of food, deficiency and create pollution, making life in the difficult ecosystem, while increasing the risk of diseases that can destroy entire industries, as was the case With the white dots (WSSV) syndrome virus which decreased shrimp farming, increased demand for antibiotics, which weakens the human immune system and therefore triggers government regulations. Organic waste from fish farming nourishes algae, consume oxygen and make the region uninhabitable, which is comparable to the runoff from fertilizers from agriculture. The old strategy that the pollution solution is dilution does not work in this case when agriculture is also intense. Professor George Chan, who spent his career as a health engineer at the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States, took an early retirement at the age of 59 and returned to his ancestral lands in China to study the means subsistence in rural areas while restaurants its old family home. The professor learned how the Chinese raise the fish without feeding them. While their productivity would be considered low compared to European and American standards, their effectiveness in the production of proteins from fish, pigs, algae and plant products is high, even exceeding the productivity of Norwegian salmon factories . While the experts trained in the main activity would measure the yield of a single single breeding fish, the professor realized that the 7.5 tonnes of fish per worker are completed by pork, ducks, from the rice, cucumbers, algae, biogas and much more. M. Chan learned how each Chinese poultry poultry (or poultry) carefully collected manure in a digester. This generates biogas. The mud flows through algae ponds, more mineralizing biological matter. This in turn produces algae in a sequence of shallow algae ponds, an excellent food additive, as well as the conversion of water into highly alkaline water which has the nutritive balance ideal to nourish the benthos, the phyto- and zooplankton. The three -meter ponds are covered with grass, which is harvested daily to feed herbivores. The ponds are sown with at least seven types of fish, one for each trophic level. The quantity of nutrients in the ponds is high, but as the bottom eaters reduce to at least eutrophication and that aquaponics on a floating bed absorbs the rich nutrients which are normally labeled “pollution”, all these elements contribute to increase the total productivity of the system.
The first cash flow
Mr. Chan left China and started on a mission to develop integrated fish farming. His first project in Fiji, set up as a research center in cooperation with the University of the South Pacific in Montfort Boys Town, quickly became a reference throughout the Pacific region. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has organized a series of technical meetings to pool these skills. The results surprised all the criticisms since the production of fish without any purchase of animal food reaches 15 tonnes per hectare with a workload of two full -time equivalents. In addition, the integrated system raises 240 pigs each year (in units of 60 pigs twice a year). The advantage of this waterfall of nutrients and energy is that the wastewater of fish farming and pigsty have been successfully converted into added value, generating more money. This waterfall of nutrients, material and energy, generating added value while reducing costs with what is available locally, is a typical characteristic of the blue economy.
The opportunity
China's practical experience in Fiji has been reproduced on all continents. However, it was in Brazil that the interest was the most lively, where the pork breeders in the state of paraná were largely committed to adapting and replying the system. The project was adopted by Tecpar, the technology center which installed in a few years nearly 100 integrated fish and pig production units. We were able to trace more than 250 projects in more than 80 countries where George Chan's work was initiated and/or inspired by him, and developed by local entrepreneurs. All these projects have been implemented without even taking into account the positive effects on climate change. If we add all the economic, social and environmental advantages, the integrated farming system competes with the unique product company model that monoculture fish farms or specialized pig farms have adopted for the purpose to achieve economies of scale. Today, a new agricultural model is essential where, thanks to the application of economies of scale, the integration of productivity of the five kingdoms of nature generates more with much less, while creating jobs. This is what the blue economy is.
