The current state of the aquaculture industry is worrying, and these problems cannot be ignored

I am not a pessimist or a conspiracy theorist, but while everyone is enjoying the feast brought by the industry's chaotic times, I have a vague concern that stakeholders may not mind letting the chaos last longer.

Although market conditions dictate the mood of practitioners, the aquaculture industry is still thriving. In addition to big players from other sectors rushing into the aquaculture industry, companies large and small within the industry also keep declaring their wish to grow into dominant players, which means the aquaculture industry still has opportunities and also shows that the industry landscape has not truly taken shape. In this noisy industry gold rush, behind the apparent bustle, there should be two forces wrestling: one is the driving force pushing the industry forward, and the other is the resistance formed by vested interests. I am not a pessimist or a conspiracy theorist, but while everyone is enjoying the feast brought by the industry's chaotic times, I have a vague concern that stakeholders may not mind letting the chaos last longer.

First, feed. Why is aquaculture feed sought after across sectors by agriculture and animal husbandry enterprises? It is simply because aquaculture feed has not yet produced truly established standards. Unlike the livestock farming industry, where scale, standardization and intensification are rapidly improving, the diversity of aquatic environments, farming models and even farming habits will all cause market demand for aquaculture feed products to have a certain specificity, making it difficult to objectively evaluate product effects over a large area. Especially in recent years, affected by market conditions, diseases and so on, farmers have tended to choose polyculture models to avoid risks, or have not fed feed throughout the whole cycle. These changes in habits will all make it impossible for farmers to judge feed effects very accurately. As a result, feed companies have more opportunities.

Second, microecological preparations. Many companies now claim to have introduced bacterial strains from abroad, and these live bacteria products indeed have relatively significant effects, but without exception they need to be added regularly. An expert once raised an idea: screening native dominant strains may be more suitable for disease prevention and control in the aquaculture process. The general basis is that "each local environment nurtures its own bacteria"; foreign strains can form a dominant flora in the short term, but because they are "not adapted to the local environment" they quickly die out, so they need to be added regularly; if native strains are selected, they can exist relatively stably after forming a dominant flora. However, from the commercial logic of enterprises, only promoting foreign strains brings corporate benefits, while promoting native strains is more like public welfare work. At the same time, this also raises another question: will long-term addition of foreign strains affect the ecology of native bacterial flora and lead to a series of chain reactions, such as changing environments including soil and water bodies?

Third, farming. The water currently used for farming still belongs to public resources, and individual farmers do not need to pay taxes according to output. They can use water resources freely without paying for the negative impact of farming on the environment. The way to profit is to continuously increase farming output, which is also what all links in the current aquaculture value chain hope to see. In the process, farming water is naturally discharged in large amounts and taken in large amounts (treating aquaculture wastewater requires cost, and driven by profit, farmers find it hard to treat it spontaneously). Although some people withdraw or shift elsewhere, newcomers or newly developed farming areas all without exception continue the above crude profit model. If things go on like this, will there still be a pure land in the future to provide safe aquatic products for ourselves?

These concerns are also accompanied by some imaginings, or unrealistic ideas. But when aquaculture output is already oversupplied and is increasingly impacted by imported high-quality aquatic products, we should think about how to make China's aquaculture industry develop healthily and sustainably, and take action.