PARIS — Aquaculture is overtaking traditional fisheries in global production, the Food and Agriculture Organization said Monday, but a scientist with the organization, a United Nations body, said that the practice could not continue growing indefinitely at the current pace.
Fish farming is the fastest growing area of animal food production, increasing at a 6.6 percent annual rate from 1970 to 2008, the F.A.O. said in a report, State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2010. Over that period, the global per capita supply of farm-raised fish rose to 7.8 kilograms, or 17.2 pounds, from 0.7 kilogram.
“We’re going to run into constraints,” Kevern Cochrane, director of the F.A.O.’s resources use and conservation division and a contributor to the report, said by telephone, “in terms of space availability, water availability — particularly fresh water — and also environmental impacts and supply of feed.”
“Growth is not sustainable indefinitely at that level,” he said, “and we are currently seeing a reduction in the annual rate of increase.”
To read the restof the story, please go to: The New York Times.
