Farm-raised fish every year devour 30 million tons of wild-caught fish worldwide.
With seafood consumption hitting record levels in recent years — more than 20 kilograms per person per year, according to the latest FAO research — it will take 20 to 30 new feed products to achieve a sustainable seafood industry this century, says Mike Velings, co-founder of Aqua-Spark, an aquaculture investment fund. “The 200–300 million tonnes of additional aquaculture feed we’ll need to find each year by the end of this century is a massive challenge, especially as it typically takes two to three decades to develop a new feed alternative from beginning to scaled production.”
Aqua-Spark has been backing feedstock innovators, including Calysta, which makes a microbe-based non-animal protein, and eFishery, which uses monitors to manage feed usage and prevent waste. Alternative feed varieties themselves could be worth a $10 billion slice of the global aquaculture feedstock market.
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