> Fish and seafood self-sufficiency is particularly low across most regions
This seems like an impossible requirement to meet for landlocked countries.
I didn't see how deep they go here: for example, Ireland ranked higher than I expected, because of a lot of dairy and meat production. But how much of the cattle feed is imported?
According to this article, "Ireland imports around 80 percent of its animal feed, food, beverages, and other agri-food products".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Ireland
I haven't examined the source link to see if that's fully accurate, but if it's even mostly true, and that import collapsed, it would be a catastrophe.
It's not enough just to label a country as producer/not producer for a category but rather whether that production is fully stable and internalized in case of disasters/war.
My guess is that the results in the study should look worse for many of the countries listed.
> This seems like an impossible requirement to meet for landlocked countries.
Why? There's plenty of freshwater fish that are farmed around the world. Trout, tilapia, etc.
> It's not enough just to label a country as producer/not producer for a category but rather whether that production is fully stable and internalized in case of disasters/war.
Conversely, many industrialized and wealthy countries can probably shift their production pretty easily. For example, looks like Hungary is doing well on fruit but not on vegetables. This is probably not because it's hard for them to grow vegetables, just that there's no economic incentive to.
Similarly, the two-way legumes / veggies difference between the US and Mexico probably boils down to free-market economics or government subsidies more than to any real agricultural bottlenecks on either side.
> There's plenty of freshwater fish that are farmed around the world. Trout, tilapia, etc.
Not to a level that could feed the entire country, surely.
No, but mostly for economic reasons. You can farm a whole lot of fish in aquaculture - it's just more expensive than importing wild caught fish.
The numbers look pretty insane, you can raise many tons of fish in relatively small volumes of water (several hundred kg of fish per year per cubic meter). You just gotta build the ponds/tanks/cages, and the infrastructure to filter the water, supply the oxygen and deliver the feed.
Why? If you have the money, the equipment, and the climate, what's stopping you from shifting agricultural production from one good to another on any scale you like? It's often as simple as the government saying "you know what, from now on, we're subsidizing beans instead of corn".
Barring some planetary-scale cataclysm, most of Europe and the US are at no real risk of starving. There are other countries that are at a real risk, but the map doesn't make a clear distinction between "red as a matter of convenience" and "red because they physically can't do it".
> If you have the money, the equipment, and the climate, what's stopping you from shifting agricultural production from one good to another on any scale you like?
Then we will lack whatever was produced on the place where you those new ponds with huge amount of fish.
This argument does not work, because we are not limited by available space in total agricultural output. Just consider the Netherlands: Second largest food exporter despite the US being >200 times larger.
Most of the richer countries/trade unions have a large meat surplus that could be easily shifted to something else, too.
Fish don't care about soil quality or level ground. If anything fish ponds can benefit from height differences because that allows you to flow water through multiple ponds before pumping it back up
Obviously nations do have limited surface area and creating new agricultural areas for them would be to the detriment of forests and "nature"
There is a difference between 'can produce the food with the climate' and 'should produce the food with the climate'. Comparative advantage crops up yet. Iceland can grow bananas by magma but they are grown slower and have more expensive labor than tropical banana growing countries.
What's stopping us from shifting agricultural production, is probably the same that's stopping us from fixing climate change.
If I read the study correctly the bar isn't to feed the entire population exclusively on fish, only to cover the expected ratio of fish in the diet.
> There's plenty of freshwater fish that are farmed around the world
Farmed fish are often fed on fish meal from the ocean - e.g. fish meal made from species that are not eaten by people. Between 5% and 10% of ocean fishing is used for such aquaculture.
Same same as the cattle example in Ireland being fed on imported animal feed.
That's only because that bycatch is almost free of charge in areas with significant ocean fishing fleets.
You can provide the right mix of proteins and fats from algal and insect sources, so this shouldn't be a barrier to increased adoption of fish farming.
(Scaling wastewater and disease management are perhaps greater challenges, but ought not to be intractable either)
I had a look at the reference and the Wikipedia creates a misleading picture. The source states
> Ireland has very limited horticultural and grain production on account of its topography and climate, and it imports around 80 percent of its animal feed, food, and beverage needs.
Cattle are predominantly grass-fed in Ireland which is largely self-sufficient in grass/silage. Not to minimize the fragility of its economy wrt to food production - but the 80% I imagine is due to the reliance on other EU for fruits, vegetables and grain but these imports are almost exclusively for human consumption.
I was wondering about that. Cattle in Britain are also predominately grass fed and Ireland has a similar climate and environment and a much lower population density and a lot more land for cattle.
Ireland also exports a lot of that grass fed beef, so could presumably export less, and consume more of it to replace whatever it could not import.
A lot of other countries are also be both importers and exporters of food. The problem might be that in some places the quality and range of diet might decline.
In Ireland (and I believe it's similar in GB), beef cattle are usually finished on some mix of silage and concentrated feed with a significant maize component to promote better fat distribution.
There's a continuum between 'extensive' and 'intensive' finishing methods - the former takes longer and uses more forage & grass, and is best suited to native breeds. The latter uses more silage & concentrate, and is used for 'continental' breeds.
Dairy cows will also have pelleted additives over the winter, making up to about a quarter of their intake (largely depending on silage quality). But those tend to be mixes of yeast, fats, and digestible fibre so shouldn't necessarily require imports.
https://www.farmersjournal.ie/tillage/news/feed-imports-into...
It seems like both of these are true: "Cattle are predominantly grass-fed" - yes, but this is seasonal; when they're eating something other than grass, it's an import.
Silage is grass stored to use out of season, it can still have been produced in Ireland.
Apparently impossible for Australia as well, entirely girt by sea, and only 23million population. We also have significant knowledge and efforts in on-shore fish farming as well.
I am unsure how deep this study goes to understand capacity and capability, especially with regards to how each country could adapt.
We also fail at vegetables. But given we are highly leveraged in dairy for export, if we were isolated by trade we could switch up our land use. I am not saying it would be fool proof, but we can grow veggies here. We have an insane amount of arable land contrasted to our population.
Population here is over 27 million atm. [1] [2]
The idea we can simply change land use here seems simple too, but much of the agricultural industry has boxed themselves in, applying nasty BS to the ground which used to be not safe to grow veggies for 6 - 7 years bare minimum, though there has been of late, pressure to let the limit slide downwards for the idiots who could not be told that choosing a problem chemicals over some others which took a bit more effort, was going to bite them in the bum.
I have farmed veggies, but in a dry farming situation (no irrigation) so the whole show is at the mercy of the weather. Last few years have been a no go. Many other areas find themselves in a similar situation, water either costs and arm and leg or there's not enough access to it when required.
Ironically the best areas that grew a lot of veggies were (up until 60s, 70s) along the coast up my way Queensland ... much of it gave was to roads and houses that need wet weather insurance during very wet periods ... they are are subject to flooding.
The other factor that governs growing vegetables is the price being offered (knife edge to low) and silly antics like from Queensland sending truck loads of veggies 2000 km to a central depo and then back up along the coast for distribution.
BTW, for farmers, their fuel since the beginning of 2026 has doubled in prices after fuel excise rebate, so in a few months it's going to be very interesting as to what's in the shops that's still affordable by the average worker. The supermarkets here don't miss any upward costs either, applying the real cost by some factor the public might believe is realistic.
[1] https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/australia-pop...
[2] https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population
I am very surprised to see Japan in the 40%-60% self-sufficiency category for fish. Is simply cheaper to buy from elsewhere?
On the other hand it seems almost inexcusable that the UK isn't self sufficient for fish, we're surrounded by ducking water FFS.
Dear god, let's not bring up fishing again, it was exhausting enough for Brexit.
Fish do not obey national boundaries. They don't carry passports. The entire North Atlantic ecosystem needs to be considered as one, along with quotas for sustainability. I'm not sure if it's mathematically possible for all of Europe to hit this "recommended" consumption level from pelagic fish without quickly making them extinct, has anyone checked that?
Agreements about which waters who can fish, and it being cheaper to import from elsewhere.
Short-sighted I agree. It would be worth paying a bit more for security - the same applies to a lot of other things.