A renewed emphasis on domestic food security introduced recently by China’s government could result in a shift in the country’s aquaculture sector operations.
At the Central Rural Work Conference in Beijing, China, in mid-December, China President Xi Jinping reissued a call for the country to become more self-reliant through increased grain production and improving farming practices through the adoption of agricultural best practices and cutting-edge technologies. He directly linked food security to China’s national security.
“We should rely on ourselves to hold the rice bowl steady,” state media quoted Xi as saying at the conference.
China produces enough rice and wheat to cover its domestic demand, but remains heavily dependent on imported soybeans, which is used for livestock and aquaculture feed, according to the South China Morning Post. In recent years, China has become a major importer of a number of other grains and oilseeds, the price of which soared after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
China’s government led an effort in 2022 to expand domestic soybean production, and a series of Chinese government documents issued in 2022 emphasized the importance of food security and increasing local supply of key grains and oilseeds over the growth of cash crops targeted at the export market.
Wang Yamin, a professor at Shandong University’s Marine College, told the South China Morning Post in May 2022 that aquaculture products should be explicitly included in China’s food security strategy.
“It can alleviate the food security problem and can replace some food consumption,” Wang said.
China has led the world in seafood production since 1989, and aquaculture accounted for 78.95 percent of China's seafood production in 2020, producing nearly 50 million metric tons of seafood in 2020, or 60 percent of global aquaculture production. But some of that production is exported – for example, about half of the tilapia grown in China is exported – which means it doesn’t contribute to domestic food security.
While feeding fish that are exported “isn’t good for food security,” the aquaculture industry nonetheless “creates a lot of other positive things which outweigh that,” Darin Friedrichs, the head of research at Sitonia Consulting, an agribusiness consultancy in Shanghai, told SeafoodSource.
China’s aquaculture industry has created a market clamoring for domestically produced aquafeed that uses locally produced grains, Friedrichs said. In fact, the aquaculture sector has been the strongest growing market segment for China’s feed industry, Friedrichs said, giving it staying power even with the China’s new food security policy push.
“Aquaculture feed output has remained strong in 2022 even though most of this year has seen year-on-year decline in major categories of animal feed production,” he said. “I’m not sure if the grain and food security focus will impact exports much, because fisheries and aquaculture are value-added industries that generate economic activity in rural areas and then generate income through the exports.”
Friedrichs believes the aquaculture situation has parallels with industrial corn processing in China.
"Part of the reason there has been a big increase in corn imports is because a lot of corn is now going to industrial processing to make things like sugars, starches, [and] ethanol instead of feeding animals. Many of those industrial products are then exported,” he said. “On one hand, that’s bad for food security, because corn is being converted into something else and being exported. That also means China needs to import more corn. But the government continues to support that industry. Because while it’s a net negative for grain security, it’s positive in a lot of other ways. The industrial corn processors are in poor parts of northeastern China, so the new plants bring in economic activity, much-needed tax revenues for the local governments, and [new] jobs. Then a portion of the products get exported, which brings in much-loved foreign exchange.”
Wang Yamin, a professor at Shandong University’s Marine College, said the biggest threat to China’s aquaculture industry isn’t the country’s food security push, but rather China’s recently enacted environmental protection policies and the industry’s low profit margins. Some regional governments have lost enthusiasm for developing the aquaculture industry locally because they can realize better returns through investments in other industrial sectors, Wang said.
Photo courtesy of CHEN WS/Shutterstock
