SNAPP - Comparative terrestrial feed and land use of an aquaculture-dominant world

Reducing food production pressures on the environment while feeding an ever-growing human population is one of the grand challenges facing humanity. The magnitude of environmental impacts from food production, largely around land use, has motivated evaluation of the environmental and health benefits of shifting diets, typically away from meat towards seafood or vegetarian diets. With seafood, global wild catches have remained relatively unchanged for the last two decades, suggesting increased demand for seafood will have to rely on aquaculture (i.e., aquatic farming). Increasingly, cultivated aquatic species depend on direct feed inputs from agricultural sources, raising concerns around further straining crops and land use for feed. Yet, the relative impact and potential of aquaculture remains unclear. Here we simulate how different forms of aquaculture contribute and compare to feed and land use of terrestrial meat production and how spatial patterns might change by mid-century if diets move towards more cultured seafood and less meat. Using country-level aquatic and terrestrial data, we show aquaculture requires less feed crops and land, even if over a third of protein production comes from aquaculture by 2050. However, feed and land sparing benefits are spatially heterogeneous, driven by differing patterns of production, trade, and feed composition. Notably, we capture the magnitude and uncertainty of reducing feed and land use through improved animal efficiency and changing human diets. This data package captures the scientific workflow and computation used to produce the journal article: Froelich et al., (2018) Comparative terrestrial feed and land use of an aquaculture-dominant world, PNAS.