The Economic Geographies of Aquaculture

Abstract

Fish protein is projected to make up increasing proportions of our protein intake in the years to come with increasing supply coming from aquaculture. Despite its fast increasing economic importance, there is a relative paucity of research on aquaculture from the standpoint of economic geography. This paper contributes to this literature by first reviewing the socio-economics of certification of fish and the role of aquaculture in economic development – two of the more pervasive research strands in aquaculture. Following that, we show how global commodity chain perspectives can augment geographical research on aquaculture. We argue that despite some shortcomings, the global commodity chain approach is a viable approach to examine the aquaculture industry because of its ability to elucidate the uneven and contested nature of commodity and other resource flows between the production, distribution, and consumption nodes and its potential to analyze the impacts of the wider regulatory and institutional environment on the industry.