Abstract
Aquaculture is central in meeting expanding global demands for shrimp consumption. Consequently, increasing feed use is mainly responsible for the overall environmental impact of aquaculture production. Significant amounts of fishmeal are included in shrimp diets, causing dependency on finite marine resources. Driven by economic incentives, terrestrial plant ingredients are widely viewed as sustainable alternatives. Incremental fishmeal substitution by plant ingredients in shrimp feed was modeled and effects on marine and terrestrial resources such as fish, land, freshwater, nitrogen, and phosphorus were assessed. We find that complete substitution of 20–30% fishmeal totals could lead to increasing demand for freshwater (up to 63%), land (up to 81%), and phosphorus (up to 83%), while other substitution rates lead to proportionally lower impacts. These findings suggest additional pressures on essential agricultural resources with associated socio-economic and environmental effects as a trade-off to pressures on finite marine resources. Even though the production of shrimp feed (or aquafeed in general) utilizes only a small percentage of the global crop production, the findings indicate that the sustainability of substituting fishmeal by plant ingredients should not be taken for granted, especially since aquaculture has been one of the fastest growing food sectors. Therefore, the importance of utilizing by-products and novel ingredients such as microbial biomass, algae, and insect meals in mitigating the use of marine and terrestrial resources is discussed.
Highlights
Global fish consumption per capita almost doubled from 9.96 kg in 1961 until 19.86 kg in 2013, and capture fisheries and aquaculture are important contributors to the global food supply, producing in 2013 approximately 17.7% of the total 30 g capita−1 day−1 animal protein, which is more than poultry (17.4%), pig (15.7%), and bovine (12.0%) [1]
PM1 and PM2 showed a respective increase of 57% (1354–2119 m3/metric ton (MT)) and 62% (1485–2402 m3/MT), while the freshwater demand for LV1 increased by 37% (1401–1915 m3/MT)
This paper shows that on a species level, while fishmeal inclusion in the diet of P. monodon declined from 33.7% to 6%, total water footprint increased from approximately 1500 m3/MT to 2100 m3/MT, and a change in ratio of green, blue, and grey water footprint occurred, which shows similarities with our model results
Summary
Global fish consumption per capita almost doubled from 9.96 kg in 1961 until 19.86 kg in 2013, and capture fisheries and aquaculture are important contributors to the global food supply, producing in 2013 approximately 17.7% of the total 30 g capita−1 day−1 animal protein, which is more than poultry (17.4%), pig (15.7%), and bovine (12.0%) [1]. The aquaculture sector is growing faster than any other food-producing sector, and in 2016, aquaculture contributed to 46.8% of the global fish production [2]. More than 50% of the global shrimp supply originates from aquaculture with an estimated production volume between four and five million MT in 2015 [4], making it one of the largest consumers of aquafeed [2,5] and most valuable aquaculture production group [2,3]. Aquafeed is shifting towards crop-based ingredients, mainly driven by economic incentives [8,9,10], as the relative price of fishmeal increases compared to common plant ingredients, such as soy protein concentrate, cereal, and wheat gluten [2,7,11]
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