Context While WA is a globally significant primary producer of agricultural goods and seafood, the recent pandemic exposed food security issues and dependence on produce outside WA. There is an opportunity to improve the resilience of WA’s food supply chain and broader economy through growing and diversifying the WA food sector. This prospectus has identified small scale, artisan food production and aquaculture as offering an excellent investment and growth opportunity across WA. Artisan food and beverage value-added production is underdeveloped across most of the State’s food producing regions. This segment presents a growth scenario that can improve WA’s food security, grow the value captured regionally and develop branded food regions coupled with quality assurance
Aquaculture will be an essential part of the solution to global food security.
schemes akin to those long established in Europe. The high value focus is on niche agriculture to avoid competing with mass market economies of scale. Further, the shift to renewable energy generation improves the cost of regional food processing enabling the establishment of facilities close to food crops. “Aquaculture will be an essential part of the solution to global food security.“ 12 Aquaculture is characterised by intensive production which offer production economies. Global demand for seafood is forecast to grow by 26% by 2030 with aquaculture overtaking wild catch fisheries at the same time. This represents a 50% increase in global aquaculture production over the same period. This is a major opportunity to expand the sector both inland and along WA’s pristine coastline. Industry is investing heavily to expand both onshore and offshore aquaculture. Some operations are mature, including rock oyster, Akoya, pearl and abalone farming at various locations in the Southern and Kimberley Aquaculture Development Zones. Others are at various stages of the pre-commercial investment development process, including asparagopsis (seaweed), onshore and offshore finfish and prawn farms as well as offshore tropical rock oysters. Most aquaculture is offshore, however onshore facilities offers some significant benefits despite being capital intensive. Onshore facilities paired with renewable energy generation and secure access to water avoid many of the ecological challenges associated with establishing a new offshore facility. WA currently has two commercial hatcheries servicing the industry: shellfish from Albany and barramundi /yellowtail kingfish out of Fremantle. The State Government is investigating a proposed finfish nursery for Geraldton. 13
FISH TO 2030: Prospects for Fisheries and Aquaculture, World Bank 2015 - www.fao.org/3/i3640e/i3640e.pdf
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13 www.fish.wa.gov.au/Fishing-and-Aquaculture/Aquaculture/Aquaculture-Regions/Pages/Marine-Fish-Production-And-Research.aspx
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