Global aquaculture firms and the wider value chain entered the second half of 2026 facing a difficult combination of constrained supply, rising feed costs, climate uncertainty, and uneven consumer demand, according to Rabobank's latest Global Aquaculture Update.
After weathering several major disruptions over the past decade, the industry has now entered a phase in which climate change, tightening feed ingredient supplies, and geopolitical uncertainty are reshaping global seafood markets, Rabobank Seafood Analyst Novel Sharma told SeafoodSource, explaining the industry should plan for continual uncertainty rather than treat each challenge as an isolated disruption.
Regarding aquafeed, traditional marine ingredient supplies are currently tight, and the Dutch financial services firm’s latest report advised the issue could worsen as the ongoing El Niño weather pattern is expected to intensify deep into the fourth quarter of the year and into 2027, raising the risk that Peru’s anchovy quota could be slashed in its second season of the year and fishmeal and fish oil shortages not seen since 2023 may return.
In the shorter term, fishmeal prices have already risen above levels seen during the 2023 El Niño event, according to the report, and could go on to exceed those highs for “prolonged periods.” Meanwhile, fish oil prices are now double those of last year.
This price spike, the report states, has been underpinned by “constrained supply expectations and structurally stronger demand, led by the expansion of Chinese aquaculture.”
As fishmeal, fish oil, soy, and other commodities are all exposed to climate impacts and weather-related disruptions, Sharma said there could be a reevaluation of what the baseline is for costs, possibly opening the door to alternative ingredients in feed that may have been deemed too expensive before.
"I think the supply shock that's coming now will probably reset people's expectations,” he said.
In other words, rather than representing a temporary spike, higher input costs could become part of the industry's longer-term operating environment, Sharma said, and the debate around novel ingredients that have struggled to compete economically with conventional marine ingredients is evolving concurrently.
"Since I joined [Rabobank], a lot of the discussion around alternatives has been about price. It's not really a price issue anymore. It's a scarcity issue,” he said. “If you want to keep growing seafood production, this is the real barrier. You need those products in volume, and right now, the volumes simply aren't there.”
Nevertheless, Sharma said he is confident producers will gradually overcome the “biggest hurdle” of scaling alternative proteins and that they will be utilized accordingly alongside “essential” fishmeal and fish oil ingredients.
On the consumer demand side of the global seafood industry, Sharma said it remains fundamentally strong but explained there’s a growing polarization within the broader market.
In the case of salmon, he said demand has been upheld by its popularity among relatively affluent consumers.
"Salmon targets a different income group,” he said. “That income group has generally been doing fairly well. My hypothesis is that the middle income [market] is diminishing. People are either moving up or moving down.”
That trend, he argued, could explain why premium species such as salmon have proved relatively resilient, while products occupying the middle of the market remain more exposed to changes in consumer spending.
The expectation from Rabobank is that globally, salmon output will recover during the latter part of this year despite some short-term slowing, with low mortality in Norway allowing the country to increase its harvest-ready biomass at the end of May by 15 percent year over year. Chile, though, remains more exposed to the climatic risks associated with El Niño, the report found.
Meanwhile, shrimp supply growth, which Rabobank placed in that middle of the market category more exposed to changes in consumer spending, is expected to continue diverging across production regions, with “moderate expansion sustained in Ecuador but tariff pressures possibly weighing on India’s and Indonesia’s outputs.”
Rabobank’s report said that global shrimp markets are entering a phase of “temporary rebalancing” and that the sector remains “highly sensitive” to external macroeconomic and geopolitical factors. It also noted that in the U.S., there’s optimism that the demand for imports will improve as reduced tariffs gradually normalize wholesale prices. Nevertheless, pressure on consumer incomes continues to impact consumption.
Beyond climate and biology, Sharma said international trade is emerging as perhaps the industry's greatest strategic uncertainty moving forward, with seafood’s position as the world's most heavily traded animal protein making it particularly vulnerable to shifting geopolitical relationships.
