The third international seminar on advanced lessons in economics from fisheries and aquaculture was held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, from July 6-10, 2015, attracting 36 speakers from 22 countries and over a hundred participants. The event focused on the challenges facing both fisheries and aquaculture, emphasizing the need for collaboration between the industry and government, while presenting various innovative strategies to enhance productivity and sustainability in these sectors. Key discussions included the importance of aquaculture in food production, the competitive dynamics between wild and farmed fish, and the economic sustainability of the EU seafood industry.

1. T
he third international seminar on
Advanced Lessons in Economics
from the Fisheries and Aquaculture
(ALFAE) was held in Santiago de
Compestela, Galicia, Spain from 6-10 July
2015. The event, held every two years,
attracted the participation of 36 speakers
from 22 countries across five continents and
was attended by more than fifty students,
who staged debates about the state of the
economy in these sectors and the latest
in technological innovation, marketing and
governance. FAO Food and Agriculture
Organisation, awarded eight grants to
students from China, Turkey, Brazil, India,
Tanzania (2), Morocco and South Africa.
The seminar, which was aimed especially
at participants with a university education or
equivalent professional experience, research-
ers, managers, industry players, consultants,
advisers and other specialists involved in the
socio-economics of fisheries and aquaculture,
finally brought together over a hundred
participants.
During this course, which took place at
the headquarters of the Galician School of
Public Administration, experts revealed that
both the fisheries and the aquaculture are not
without problems and challenges and agreed
on the need that industry and government
work together to overcome weaknesses and
threats and take advantage of opportunities
and strengths, including those related to
the interactions between the two sectors.
ADVANCED
LESSONS IN
ECONOMICSby the International Aquafeed Staff Writer
24 | INTERNATIONAL AQUAFEED | July-August 2015
FEATURE

2. The course was directed by Professor Jose
Manuel Fernandez Polanco and Professor
Trond Bjorndal. It was apt to be held in Galicia
which is the Spanish leader in many aspects of
the seafood industry employing some 34,000
people.
Each day brought in new topics and speak-
ers and covered a vast range of subjects with
views from academia, industry and govern-
ment.
The event was kicked off by Dr Jaqueline
Alder, FAO, highlighting the latest information
on the world’s 392 wild fisheries stocks and
the domination of the China/Asian countries
relating to aquaculture. An excellent debate
was had regarding the needs for certification
as consumers become more aware of sustain-
able food offers.
Much was learned about the importance
of the shellfish industry to Galicia and that will
feature in a report in a later edition.
Professor Gunnar Knapp’s views on
the ‘Interactions between Fisheries and
Aquaculture’ highlighted the tensions in Alaska
between ‘wild’ and ‘farmed’. He stressed
that the diversity makes it very difficult to
generalise about fisheries or aquaculture - or
how they interact and focused his comments
on Alaska. He stated, “40 percent of Alaska’s
salmon are released from hatcheries - and
start their lives just liked ‘farmed’ salmon yet
are harvested and promoted as “Wild Alaska
Seafood”.
Knapp said “Fisheries have some com-
petitive advantages over aquaculture in that
nature produces wild fish ‘for free’ often in
large volumes and that the fish are ‘natural’
products. However, across the entire value
chain, fisheries have many inherent com-
petitive disadvantages relative to aquaculture.
These were higher costs of harvesting; season-
ality of production; variation and unpredict-
ability of production; variation in fish size and
quality; remote locations; production con-
straints; inability to increase production and
the inability to improve or modify fish through
selective breeding. It is these constraints that
led to the replacement of most wild plant and
animal gathering and hunting by agriculture.”
Inconsistent and unpredictable production
clearly makes it much more difficult for wild
salmon producers than for farmed salmon
producers to meet buyers’ supply needs
and to plan for marketing. Knapp specifically
focused attention on Bristol Bay, the largest
salmon run in Alaska and the world, and
highlighted the economic issues in having to
produce your entire year’s catch in a period
of one month or less.
In concluding Professor Knapp said, “the
important choices for society are not between
aquaculture and wild fisheries. Significant
growth in fish production can only come
from aquaculture. The important choices for
society are between increasing aquaculture
or increasing meat production. The challenge
for society is to maximise the significant
potential benefits from both wild fisheries and
aquaculture.”
From University of Stavanger, Professor
Frank Asche, presented on ‘Factors affect-
ing efficiency in aquaculture business’ and
commenced by emphasising that the world’s
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3. waterways and oceans are a great under
utilised resource.
Professor Asche said, “Increasingly, land-
based technologies are being adopted to
use this resource and Aquaculture is the
‘food production’ arm of the ocean with
Aquaculture being all about farming while
fisheries are the world’s last large hunting
industry. Aquaculture is an old technology, but
a revolution took place in the 1970s as people
began to use knowledge from agro-sciences
to domesticate, breed and feed fish.”
Asche underlined that conditions favouring
increased aquaculture production with popu-
lation growth and economic growth leading to
increased aggregate demand for food. With
stagnating global catches of fish reducing the
competitiveness of wild fish and globalisation
reducing the cost of shipping products and
increasing trade. Added to this, the growth
of retail chains favouring supply chains with
sufficient control to enable efficient logistics
created the opening for aquaculture. To
exploit these conditions, businesses must be
competitive and competitive producers are
efficient.
He added, “Aquaculture is the result of
systematic Research and Development and
innovation in water-based food production
systems. Expansion of aquaculture produc-
tion is profitable because of lower produc-
tion cost due to a number of innovations
and better technology increases productivity
as one can produce more with the same
input factors or increase the efficiency of
those inputs.”
On productivity growth, specifically
Salmon, Professor Asche said, “The develop-
ment of input factors has been tremendous,
with better feed, automatic feeding systems,
etc and there is a substantial catching up
potential for most species. Twenty years ago
feed made up 25 percent of salmon farmers’
cost, and smolt about 20 percent whereas
currently feed is 55 percent and smolt is down
to 15 percent due to increased growth rates,
earlier smolt release. On the other hand for
efficient chicken farmers, feed is more than
80 percent of the production cost. Efficient
species are basically converters of cheap low
quality inputs to more desirable outputs.”
Professor Asche concluded his talk high-
lighting that “Aquaculture production will
continue to increase because it has only just
started to adopt technology from agriculture,
and there is a tremendous scope for further
productivity growth. As for all biological pro-
duction processes, this creates environmental
challenges, which can be solved. Clearly North
America and EU lag behind Asia and aquacul-
ture production is thus unevenly distributed
around the word. Much of this has to do with
what species are produced with what produc-
tion technologies and inefficient producers will
not survive.”
He added “that Europe and the USA is
not succeeding in aquaculture is interesting
because with one exception they have the
best starting point. The exception is regula-
tions that prevents efficient production.”
Asche’s one question was related to the
fishmeal trap hypothesis (Wijkstrøm, Naylor et
al) which suggests that growth in aquaculture
production increases demand for forage fish
to produce feed and this makes aquaculture
inherently unsustainable and environmentally
degrading, requires that forage fisheries are
poorly managed, that forage fish have no
substitutes, and that cost is not important for
aquaculture production. This will eventually
also put a limit on aquaculture production and
requires that aquaculture feed must contain
marine ingredients.
Two speakers from Professor Asche high-
lighted the issues he raised regarding North
America and Europe.
Professor Bertrand Le Gallic, University
of Western Brittany presented on ‘Economic
Sustainability of the EU Seafood Industry’ and
was specifically centering on the need for
improving competitiveness for the EU seafood
sector.
Bertrand noted concerns for local, national
and EU administrations and made mention
of the H2020 SUCCESS program, which is
a European research project financed for
three years (2015-2018). It is part of the
H2020 Strategy, which is the EU Research
and Innovation Program for the period 2014-
2020. H2020 puts the emphasis on three
core themes: science of excellence, industrial
leadership and societal challenges. It aims to
raise the level of excellence in Europe’s
science base, encourage important achieve-
ments, discoveries and “world-firsts” by taking
great ideas from the lab to the market.
Included in the Blue Growth Strategy,
defined by the European Commission as “a
long term strategy to support sustainable
growth in the marine and maritime sectors
as a whole” (COM(2014) 254/2), SUCCESS
specifically addresses topic BG-10-2014 :
Consolidating the economic sustainability and
competitiveness of European fisheries and
aquaculture sectors to reap the potential of
seafood markets.
Dr Carole Engle, Engle-Stone Aquatic LLC,
spoke at some length regarding the issues
confronting the aquaculture industry in USA,
notably the Alabama Catfish industry based
on years of personal involvement and study
she had done.
Carole highlighted that many of the busi-
nesses she had dealt with had little business
education and that was the area where they
were mainly failing. She said that the common
reasons for failure were insufficient capital;
poor credit or loan structure; poor inventory
management or simply running out of cash.
Carole said some of the legislation in the USA
needed to be reviewed as clearly created an
impediment to trade.
The event was sponsored by The
Foundation Alfonso Martin Escudero in coop-
eration with FAO and the Galicia Regional
Ministry for Rural and Maritime Affairs and
coordinated by CETMAR Foundation. The
closing ceremony was conducted by Paloma
Rueda Crespo, director-manager of Sea
Technology Centre, coordinator of the semi-
nar organisation, and was accompanied by
Ignacio Llorente, a professor at the University
of Cantabria. During her speech, the head of
the Foundation CETMAR thanked the set of
speakers and students work and praised the
quality of the debates promoted throughout
the week.
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