Aquaculture A Critical Assessment of its Potential and Future

Abstract

While important for making additional food available, aquaculture is – in the foreseeable future – unlikely to contribute more than a few percent of additional food to the global protein yield for the growing human population. Some 85% of the world's total annual protein yield is at present produced by agriculture and some 14% by fisheries. Aquaculture must focus more on microorganisms, plant and herbivorous animals, and long-term research programmes should test such feasibilities as utilizing the synthetic mechanisms of low-trophic-level organisms for producing essential portions of the human diet from waste materials and providing tailor-made diets for meeting specific physiological-nutritional needs of man.