Global nutritional equity of fishmeal and aquaculture trade flows

Aquaculture, the single fastest growing food sector, is central to achieving key SustainableDevelopment Goals (e.g., SDG 2: Zero Hunger). Linking the nutrient compositionof >2,800 aquatic species with >2 million fishmeal and farmed fish transactions ininternational aquatic food trade between 2015 and 2019, we examined aquaculture’snutritional flows and distributional equity. We found that aquaculture provided adequateintakes for nearly a quarter of a million individuals, on average, across 14 key nutrients,and for up to 2.7 billion individuals for several nutrients, such as Vitamin B12. The vastmajority of these nutrients (76.8%) were domestically retained, contributing to thenutritional security of producer countries. With most internationally traded nutrientsoriginating from nutritionally vulnerable countries (57.7% for fishmeal and 66.3% forfarmed aquatic foods), rethinking existing distribution policies with nutrition as theprimary objective may help unlock the full potential of aquaculture to eliminate hungerand malnutrition.

Keywords: Aquatic food systems, Environmental justice, Globalization, inequallity, seafood markets

Elsler, L. G., J. A. Gephart, J. Zamborain-Mason, T. Cashion, M. Troell, R. L. Naylor, R. Agrawal Bejarano, and C. D. Golden. 2026. Global nutritional equity of fishmeal and aquaculture trade flows. PNAS 123(7).