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Is the FAO’s industrial aquaculture push harming ecosystems?

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is promoting industrial aquaculture but campaigners say it creates toxic pollution and threatens food sovereignty.

The FAO’s Blue Transformation agenda aims to promote the expansion of industrial aquaculture, targeting a 35% increase in production by 2030 and a further 19% by 2050.

At a glance:

• A report warns industrial aquaculture threatens small-scale fishers, food security, and marine ecosystems.
• It criticises FAO’s Blue Transformation agenda for harming the environment and livelihoods.
• WFFP urges a shift toward food sovereignty and aquaecology to achieve sustainable fisheries.

However, in a new report, the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP), a forum of small-scale fisher people worldwide, challenges the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Blue Transformation agenda, arguing that expanding industrial aquaculture threatens food sovereignty, small-scale livelihoods, and ecosystems.

Specifically, the report states that production is hindered rather than improved, as industrial aquaculture relies on unsustainable monocultures, generates toxic pollution, and displaces local fishing communities. Regarding nutrition, the report states that the aquaculture industry drives "nutritional dispossession" by diverting local protein sources, such as small pelagic fish, into feed for export-oriented farmed species, thereby undermining local populations' right to food.

Environmentally, the WFFP says that FAO-advised operations lead to ecosystem degradation, including mangrove destruction, water contamination and biodiversity loss.

As a result, the report authors call for a shift towards food sovereignty and aquaecology to better support fisher people and global food systems.

Protecting food security

Current policy implementation is transforming the seafood industry. “We are moving towards an industrial model of fish production, utilisation and trade,” Siddharth Chakravarty, former seafarer and researcher on global fisher peoples movements, told Ingredients Network.

Aquaculture focuses more on the many uses of fish and consider them as inputs, including food, feed, oil and ingredients for other industries such as aquaculture, pet food, and nutrition and additives. “Fish will be considered less as fish,” said Chakravarty.

A scientific study that explores feeding global aquaculture found that the ratio of farmed fish to wild fish can be 5:1, with five pounds of wild forage fish required to produce a single pound of farmed fish.

“That is food that is being taken away from people's plates and fed to farmed fish,” the WFFP report said.

Often, wild fish used for fishmeal go to waste. Norway presents a snapshot of this problem. In the past two years, WFFP reported the country has experienced over 20 farmed fish disasters, including those related to sea lice, severe farm fish that enter wild ecosystems, and mass death events.

How globalisation is changing seafood production

Looking at individual nations against the backdrop of globalisation also reveals an interesting picture of the seafood industry.

India, for instance, is currently in its third round of globalisation, opened up by “the maximisation of marine capture fisheries, the climate crisis, and the aquaculture boom”, Chakravarty said.

Globalisation plays a significant role in seafood production. “With the rise of seafood production in China and India, along with Ecuador and Chile, globalisation is more chaotic than merely a south-to-north flow when considering seafood from capture and culture fisheries,” Chakravarty added.

“Meanwhile, communities that have been historically self-reliant on their local fisheries are now food insecure due to the environmental contamination from the aquaculture industry,” reads the WFFP report.

Small-scale fishers at risk

“The biggest concern by far is the change in the attitude of state and multilateral institutions like the FAO,” said Chakravarty.

Previously announced efforts to prioritise capture fisheries and instruments such as the FAO’s Voluntary Guidelines for Small-Scale Fisheries promised a correction in the development path that safeguarded small-scale fishers.

The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2026 (SOFIA) report indicates that small-scale fisheries provide 90% of the employment in capture fisheries and support the livelihoods of at least 500 million people. “The solution to meet FAO’s goals of feeding people must be rooted in small-scale, traditional and artisanal fisheries,” the WFFP report said.

“Total catches at sea have been maximised, particularly in near-shore waters,” said Chakravarty. Despite being numerically in the majority, small-scale fishers take a minority of the total catch. The added expenses of fishing mean selling fish to those who can pay more for it: urban markets, restaurants and overseas consumers.

Growing demand for seafood in international markets affects the food security of communities that depend on locally caught fish.

“This is a very real concern because it means that the very bulwarks on which the livelihoods of small-scale fishers depend are now becoming pillars that evict them,” Chakravarty added.

A shift towards food sovereignty and aquaecology

The WFFP report found that ten country case studies in Latin America, North America, Africa and Asia Pacific reveal a worsening of these FAO principles.

The WFFP therefore sets out the importance of oceans, waters and fisher people and their artisanal fisheries, working with nature, emphasising they are vital for healthy food and nutrition. It calls on key demands and alternatives centring on improved governance that enforce existing human rights obligations under the UNDROP and UNDRIP.

“Bridge-building by fishers with the agro-ecological and food sovereignty movements widens the ambit of the resistance to the eviction – this is where the hope lies,” Chakravarty added.

Looking at the biggest forces shaping it over the next 10-20 years, the sector expects marine fisheries to remain crucial. However, their importance for direct consumption will be redirected towards other market demands: aquaculture, pet food, nutrition and additives.

“This transition is underpinned by an increasing penetration of capital into the seafood industry alongside the growing use of scientific-technical methods of production – this is the biggest economic force shaping the future of fisheries,” Chakravarty added.