As a follow on from our recent post ‘Global Food Supply in Charts’, which warned about long term global food supplies, here are a couple additional charts which help drive home the point of that article: the global agricultural system may be approaching a state of significant supply constraint. The first chart shows the plateauing trend in global wild fishery catches and the explosion in aquaculture. Aquaculture, or fish farming, appears to account for all of the growth in the global fish harvest since the early 1990s.

The biggest decline in the wild catch is of pelagic fish, a ‘catch-all’ term (pun intended), for fish in open water from the surface to all but the deepest waters (Demersal on the chart). These fish include many of the most common names like tuna, herring, sardines, and many more. Though less significant, crustaceans and molluscs wild catches have also declined since the early 2000.

If the peak in the global fish catch has been reached, further growth in aquaculture will require the allocation of additional agricultural resources. Unfortunately according to our recent post, agricultural land uasge also appears to have reached a peak (at least in terms of acreage). One ‘fix’ for this particular convergence of problems seems likely to be higher food prices.