Wageningen and EFARO on the Green Deal, Farm to Fork and Food from the Oceans 22.1.21 10.00

Meeting: Wageningen and EFARO on the Green Deal, Farm to Fork and Food from the Oceans 22.1.21 10.00 – 12.00 by webex

Welcome from Luc van Hoof, Executive Secretary of EFARO Luc welcomed over 40 participants and experts who had joined to discuss circular food production in our oceans. Start with Professor Louise Fresco, Chair of EFARO: Changing philosophy about changing production and how we see the sea In the least 10-15 years we’ve seen a slow and gradual change in the philosophy on the use of natural resources for food + feed. Concepts like biobased, local, circular have all come into place. It’s pushed by growing distance between urban consumers and the realities of how production and use of resources takes place. There’s also impetus from the Paris agreement, the need to be more carbon neutral, and nature conservation is a goal in itself. This has led to a political shift, e.g. the Green Deal. It’s our task to provide a scientific basis for it. The idea of circularity is complicated. And there are issues of carbon neutrality and positivity (carbon fixing). The overall thing is that this is about quality not quantity. What is circularity: Waste from one trophic level becomes used for another trophic level - resource use efficiency. It also means nutrient efficiency (nitrogen, phosphates etc). Try to develop a more integrated perspective of land based and marine based sources of nutrients. What is the optimal protein base and how to get best proteins for our food? So it’s the whole world of biobased economy. And how to keep communities that are dependent on marine resources in an economic balance - we need a science-based model for the use of marine resources so as they can produce what’s needs for food and health (it’s not just fatty fish, but what other health components can we get). This is really an integrated flow. There are a lot of challenges right now. We need an integrated picture. The marine space is still very much invisible, or often visible from a disaster point of view; the richness of the marine organism in its potential to produce organic compounds needs more attention. Our evolution as human beings has been tied to the marine space – e.g. shellfish. Now we have a chance to say that marine resources are essential for the future. We can look again at how we use our space. We need science-based answers. Video: How are the Dutch dealing with circular food production at sea - how they allocated space at sea to carry out energy, nature and food transition. Moved from land to sea. Energy: licence to operate wind parks at sea; nature: 15% of sea closed to bottom trawling; fisheries and aquaculture are acknowledged and allowed at sea. Video: what’s out there at sea and what is the potential? Prof Jan vaan der Meer of Wageningen. The sea in terms of animal life is more productive than the land, but you don’t see any plant life; what do they live off? Nature on land is very inefficient, whereas at sea it’s very efficient and most of the protein is transferred to fish. His concern is that we’re asking too much of the sea – it’s too optimistic to increase production. Finfish has less potential for improvement. We need nutrient use efficiency. There’s a limited amount of nutrients at sea. One option is to culture seaweed. Examine tradeoffs that exist between the microphytoplankton and all the animals that exist from that. Herbivores (mussels and oysters) are the most promising way. They don’t occur in the open sea. Dennis Lisbjerg DTU Aqua: there are a lot of challenges and a limit to how much we can take from the sea – we’ve had stagnant fisheries and aquaculture in EU waters for decades. But there ARE some possibilities with nature-based solutions, ecological engineering. Examples from open ocean areas where trying to manipulate the system and get the nutrients built up to increase productivity in the oceans; but our knowledge of the oceans is limited. Coastal areas: in some parts of waters in European it’s not a limiting factor in terms of how many nutrients there are, e.g. in DK O2 depletion due to nutrients in the water. So there is some productivity we could utilise. We’ve altered the system through fishing and other use of resources e.g. removal of stone reefs to build harbours, and we’re talking about how to restore/conserve these areas, to increase sustainable harvest from coastal waters. Circularity: in our fishing we depend on system and fish up what’s available, but there’s also aquaculture and seen as an area of where we can get protein from oceans.

Example Baltic brand feed innovation - one of examples of how to increase open cage aquaculture from fish coming from the same system. But it’s using smaller fish for feed!!!! Whereas in Norway the fish farmed are becoming vegetarian – it’s not a closed loop, but opening up to use terrestrial feed. More offshore aquaculture can also increase productivity in that area. We need to differentiate coastal shelf areas with open ocean areas. A good case for proteins from the oceans, because it’s productive and efficient in converting food into protein; compared to land based production. When you see the loss, it is the nutrients, and in DK legislation on pig farms is according to how much land you have to distribute the manure, but there’s also leakage of it into the marine systems. We have to remember this leakage from land to marine. Now we talk about mitigation measures to have mussel farms at sea because of all the algal blooms. So it creates a loop. Also trying to develop pre-circulating systems – fish on land, and you have to feed them something - but is this food from the ocean, even though it’s come from a land-based farm. So food from the ocean should be labelled as coming from the aquatic systems. And there are aquaponics systems – perfecting soilless farming, and you can use freshwater and saltwater. The border between terrestrial and marine start to merge and get blurred. It’s a mental challenge about how we see these concepts. Nikos Zampoukas Commission DG TRD - working on developing research and policies in fisheries and aquaculture. Horizon 2020 has an action to put into use a blue growth farm project. Hope that all research efforts will go towards establishment of the Dutch multi-platform. See potential in use of seafood (even though it’s not a lot of biomass in the oceans); and of aquaculture (e.g. making trout vegetarian). Massive potential of bivalves and echinoderms to generate food. Reminder that natural food webs are efficient; it’s a wake-up call that we are asking too much from the sea. Discussion on the limits of marine food production will continue. We need solid knowledge on how marine foodwebs go. And we need to take into account policy issues, such as marine spatial planning, socio-economic aspects of seafood demand: EU framework programmes also work on this. Annette Hurrelmann Commission DG Mare - working on scientific advice and data collection. Notes references to agriculture. We need to come to a way of having and adopting a more holistic approach to food production – it’s not land versus sea; but to find a sustainable path to food production. Circularity and food systems approach and consequences for the planet. There are other users of the space. Oceans (and land) don’t just exist for our use, but there’s also nature to consider – and we start to understand that more and more and reflect on this in the policies: Farm to Fork, Green Deal etc; Paris Climate agreement. Multi-use of oceans means we need a more inclusive way of decision making on resource use. We need to think and act globally to solve the global challenges of food production. We can further improve efficiency of ocean food production, but to a limit, it’s not a big untapped potential; to be sustainable it’s not producing more, we also need to change our consumption patterns - reduce our intake of animal proteins. Sheila Hayman Executive Director of European Marine Board - an ecosystem modeller in previous life. Importance of looking at ocean not only for food, but also for human health, social well-being, and get new medicines from the ocean. Multi-trophic aquaculture - not everyone wants to eat mussels, there’s an education thing to be done to convince folk of these new things to eat. The N. Sea is a busy place – make sure you incorporate all users of the sea (NB: NIMBY). We need to make sure we don’t just look at biology, economy, ecology, but also the social sciences and how this influences folk in their jobs – we need a co- design. We can’t get more efficient with the food from the oceans, but we can make better use of what we catch and produce, and not throwing food away. Fishing industry and research create a lot of data and we have to make sure we use all this data and manage marine environment appropriately. Discussion DG Mare Ian Shepherd on pressure on the land: So, what can the sea do? Could you produce the same amount of protein at sea? There is potential. So, there’s a potential for shellfish production at the wind parks at sea. It is the problem of pressure on land that will drive solutions. Petri Suuronen FIN on the nutrients affecting the coastal waters in the Baltic. It’s fairly difficult to reduce them once they’re there. As a result, aquaculture hasn’t been allowed to expand. In Finland they’re using herring and sprat to produce fishmeal for rainbow trout production, but even that many people consider bad because is some leakage of nutrients. 90% support this, but there are the 10% thinking it’s not good. This is the only way to utilise the herring and sprat that can’t go for human consumption. We need to increase productivity

and use all the waste in sidestreams to produce value added products. We need to keep in mind food first – use whatever we can as first priority and then as feed. So, if there was some way to upgrade Baltic pelagic fish to fish as food first, and only then as fishmeal. Noél Holmgren from SLU Aqua - we can learn from the Baltic and what happened there. There are health issues in the Baltic and what’s affecting the fish. It’s complex. Concern that if we do production in other aquatic environments, we may affect the balance of the system. We need to understand more. How do we look at the ocean environment as a source of food –what knowledge do we have that we can develop, and what are the policy implications of that? Example of productivity in the Baltic – it’s high, but the production of fish is low – so the transfer of microalgae to fish is very low. If we want to introduce large seaweed farms, what will be the consequences of that? And what will be consequences for the primary productivity (microphytoplankton)? Starting to produce seaweed may have drastic consequences for the primary productivity. So we have to be careful when introducing seaweed and shellfish culture. We mainly use the sea by fishing and productivity at sea is high – higher than we get on the land. What are the policy implications - Green Deal, Farm to Fork and Blue Growth - what’s the connection here? If we can’t get more production out of the sea, then is it more about quality, added value, making better use of resources? This could mean applying MEY, rather than MSY. Productivity at sea - we’re back to nutrients in the Baltic and sea hasn’t profited from it. There are different reasons why fish in the Baltic has gone down. We must fully understand how the system works and how the productivity of the natural system works – but that’s in the fisheries, the last of the hunter DNA. But aquaculture is different and there may be possibilities to develop that and make the microalgae in big tanks on land and use them as feed. But there is a problem of space, and we need places to do the production. So there’s the possibility/idea of doing production offshore - it’s very challenging, but it’s not based on natural systems. Norway and industrial production of salmon - now founded on production from soya beans. It’s not automatically a sustainable source for food. The land could be used directly for food. It’s not necessarily good for the production of finfish. We could use bugs or single-celled proteins instead – not regarded as food. So maybe not to make the salmon herbivore. Productivity of systems varies a lot – compare Mediterranean with other waters. For example, difficult to produce mussels in the Mediterranean because nutrient levels are very low. But the Med isn’t the same everywhere. But there are opportunities for windfarms. Luc van Hoof thanked all for the discussions. Will make a report from the meeting and share the presentations.

European Fisheries and Aquaculture Research Organization

Dear All,

The green deal, Farm to fork strategy and Food from the Oceans; initiatives for more sustainable production of food. Wageningen Marine Research and EFARO have joint forces in organising a short webinar to discuss with you the possibilities of sustainable and circular food production at sea. We would very much appreciate if you could attend the webinar.

Join us on the 22nd of January, 10.00 – 12.00 (CET).

You can use this link: Microsoft Teams meeting Join on your computer or mobile app Click here to join the meeting

Speakers will include Prof. Louise O. Fresco, Chair of the Board of Wageningen University & Research, Prof. Jaap van der Meer of Wageningen Marine Research and Dennis Lisbjerg, President of EFARO. We will get reactions from DGMARE, DGRTD and ICES.

Looking forward to welcome you next week Friday!

On behalf of the EFARO Secretariat

Sarah Smith Luc van Hoof Science Officer Executive Secretary

EFARO, the research community for a sustainable use and management of marine and freshwater living resources

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