Image Reports Fishy finances: Exposing industrial salmon’s biggest financial backers This report by Feedback identifies industrial salmon farming’s biggest financial backers and exposes the role global financiers are playing in creating a food production system – salmon farming – that it argues is harming people’s food security, health and livelihoods, as well as extracting a huge toll on the environment. Read
Image Reports Blue empire: How Norwegian salmon undermines livelihoods in West Africa The NGO Feedback found that the Norwegian farmed salmon industry consumes nearly 2 million tonnes of whole fish from the wild. It imports this from West Africa, a region facing acute food insecurity. Read
Image Journal articles Sea farming and feminist blue humanities This special issue of the Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Ethics collates four articles in critical ocean studies, indigenous, anti-colonial, queer, gender and intersectional approaches to marine and coastal sea farming. It highlights inventive and societally relevant traditions in feminist STS, environmental ethics, blue – and multispecies humanities and the long histories of indigenous peoples’ connections to coastal areas. Read
Image Journal articles Towards sustainable aquaculture in the Amazon This review explores how aquaculture can minimize its environmental impact, promote livelihoods and enhance food security. It also highlights key challenges, such as greenhouse gas emissions and land-use changes, for aquaculture to thrive sustainably in the Amazon. Read
Image Journal articles Feeding global aquaculture This research estimates that wild fish used for aquaculture feed is 307% higher than industry has previously claimed. When including fish mortality, this figure rises even higher. These findings challenge the food security and sustainability implications of aquaculture. Read
Image Essay Out of sight, out of mind? Addressing the invisibility of aquatic foods in food systems debates Blue food is too often left out of debates on food systems and food security. The physical inaccessibility of aquatic creatures, habitat and resources create their cultural invisibility - meaning their role in solutions goes unexplored, and key issues unaddressed. Learning from the Blue Humanities, IIED Researcher Giulia Nicolini calls on us to think blue food back into food systems - and so into their transformation. This essay draws on IIED’s ‘What about seafood?’ paper and work on aquatic foods. Giulia Nicolini is a researcher at the International Institute for Environment & Development (IIED). She works at the intersection of food and environmental issues, including blue foods and their role in the future of the UK food system. Giulia is also a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Exeter, based in the Centre for Rural Policy Research. Her doctoral research explores how taste and demand for seaweed as a food are changing in the UK. Read
Image Journal articles Towards gender equality in forestry, livestock, fisheries and aquaculture This review article examines the impact of gender in the forestry, livestock, fisheries and aquaculture sectors and provides empirical evidence for initiatives which have sought to redress the negative and inequitable disparities. The paper provides an overview of the major issues of women in these sectors and provides useful examples of successful programs in low- and middle-income countries. Women play a significant role in these sectors, but their work is often invisible, unregulated and vulnerable. The article calls for further efforts to eliminate gender-blind and biased policy and governance and expand and share successful initiatives. Read
Image Reports The role of seafood in UK food systems transformation This report by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the Marine Conservation Society argues that seafood should play a more prominent role in debates about food systems transformation in the UK. It discusses the connections between seafood and the broader food system and considers seafood’s potential role in food systems transformation in the UK, as well as analysing future visions for seafood in the UK. Read
Image Books Principles of sustainable aquaculture This book is an updated and revised introduction to sustainable aquaculture practices with special attention to the social, economic and environmental issues and corresponding potential solutions. Read
