Wednesday October 11, 2023
Global Seafood Alliance —
With the world’s population approaching 10 billion people by 2050, global food production will need to increase by more than 50 percent to meet humanity’s projected nutritional demand. Currently, terrestrial agriculture provides the backbone of the global food production system. However, agriculture’s potential to close the projected mid-century nutritional gap will be constrained by its negative impacts on climate, land use, freshwater resources and biodiversity.
If we turn to the ocean to try to close this nutritional gap, then we are immediately confronted with the realization that most wild-capture fisheries are already fully exploited or overexploited. Increased production from current aquaculture practices is an option, but another potential solution to the food production problem that could have both nutritional and environmental sustainability advantages would be to shift the focus of aquaculture down the marine food chain to microalgae.
This article – adapted and summarized from the original publication (Greene, C.H. and C.M. Scott-Buechler. 2022. Algal solutions: Transforming marine aquaculture from the bottom up for a sustainable future. PLoS Biol 20(10): e3001824) – presents the perspective that shifting the focus of marine aquaculture down the food chain to algae could help meet projected global nutritional demands while simultaneously improving overall environmental sustainability and ocean health.