Rosamond L. Naylor, director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment, will join demographers, authors, activists, economists, and scientists for a daylong symposium on population at the Moving Mountains Symposium in Telluride May 25. During the daylong symposium speakers will touch on subjects like water tables, food security, women's education, immigration, and human longevity in the context of population growth.

Clip from Telluride Daily Planet:

FSE director Roz Naylor will address the challenges of feeding the growing world. According to Naylor, humans are already pushing against the limits of high yield agriculture, fisheries and habitat displacement for farming to feed a population that is trending toward a more carnivorous, and therefore higher impact, diet.

“Part of the focus is: How do we meet future demands of so many people on the planet? Another important question is, if we are successful, does it just promote and enable population growth?” she said, or does it set the stage for a population to level out.

Feeding the world goes back to agriculture and food production but also biofuels, and it will require new technologies and interdisciplinary collaboration, Naylor said.

Other participants include Stanford's Paul Ehrlich, author of “The Population Bomb” and long-time leading voice on the population issue, who will talk about what will happen when the population bomb explodes. 

One of the fastest-growing segments of livestock farming in the United States is aquaculture, according to Rosamond L. Naylor, a Stanford professor of environmental Earth system science and director of Stanford's Program on Food Security and the Environment. And like any other form of livestock, fish generate waste.

But just what happens to the waste produced by coastal aquaculture has largely been a matter of conjecture.

"For many years, people have assumed that because of the ocean's size, because of the energy in its currents, that any substance you introduced into the ocean would quickly be diluted into concentrations that were barely detectable," said Jeffrey R. Koseff, professor of civil and environmental engineering.

Now Koseff and Naylor, together with Oliver Fringer, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, and a team of colleagues, have developed a computational model that allows researchers to predict where the effluent from a coastal fish farm would go. The answer may not always be appealing to down-current swimmers and surfers.

"We discovered that the state of the natural environment around fish pens can dramatically affect how far waste plumes travel from the source," Koseff said. "This suggests that we should not simply assume 'dilution is the solution' for aquaculture pollution."

The simulation incorporates the influence of variables such as tides, currents, the rotation of the Earth and the physical structure of the pens in calculating the dispersal pattern of the waste.

"These plumes actually remain quite coherent at very long distances from the source and could become a major pollution problem in coastal regions," Koseff said.

Naylor and Koseff said the model should prove valuable in selecting appropriate sites for future fish farms. Knowing the amounts of feces and uneaten food that are generated by pens, researchers will be able to predict how that dissolved waste will travel from a particular location, given local conditions.

Fish pens off the coast of Greece. Aquaculture projects such as this are expected to play an increasing role in producing fish for consumption as wild fisheries decline, but dealing with the effluent from fish farms is an increasing concern.

Naylor said the model will likely show that some locations previously thought appropriate for fish farms are actually not suitable, but she doesn't think the aquaculture industry will necessarily see that as a bad thing. Having clearly defined boundaries of where aquaculture is acceptable will help the industry avoid conflict with other users of coastal waters.

"A lot of the industry people that I have talked to are not working against the environment, they are really trying to make aquaculture work, and this would provide a useful tool for them," Naylor said.

Naylor, Koseff and their colleagues will be publishing their findings in an upcoming issue of Environmental Fluid Mechanics. The paper is online now.

Naylor said their findings are quite timely, in light of legislation in the works at both the state and federal levels.

In 2006, California passed the Sustainable Oceans Act, aimed at protecting the biologically rich waters off the coast while also recognizing the importance and economic value of providing fresh seafood.

Naylor said that a draft of the regulations to implement that legislation is currently under review and this new modeling tool should help in setting guidelines for locating and monitoring aquaculture.

At the federal level, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is taking public comments through April 11 on a draft of a national aquaculture policy.

"After the bill is passed, rules and regulations will have to be written around it and what we are providing now is a tool to help with that," she said.

Koseff acknowledged that some people might balk at relying on a computer model to guide regulations.

"We understand and recognize the limitations of the simulations," he said. "But we have confidence that the physics that we are representing in the model are realistic and our results are very representative of what happens in a near-coastal environment."

Naylor said that for an aquaculture operation to be economically feasible, a lot of pens will likely have to be concentrated in one area, making waste a significant concern.

"I also work a lot in terrestrial livestock, and I think the dissolved wastes that come out are one of the worst aspects of intensive animal raising," she said.

"If we are really thinking about getting our animal protein from fish in the future, and it is coming from net pens that are in the ocean, one of the big fears is, are we going to have feedlots of the sea?

"We would really like to completely avoid the problems we have seen in terrestrial livestock. That would be the ultimate goal and this model can help achieve that."

Naylor is the director of Stanford's Program on Food Security and the Environment and a senior fellow at the university's Woods Institute for the Environment. Koseff is co-director of the Woods Institute and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

New scientific tool, GAPI, assesses impact of global aquaculture. FSE research associate Alice Chiu on the advisory committee that pulled together this new tool and report.

Industrial-scale aquaculture production magnifies environmental degradation, according to the first global assessment of the effects of marine finfish aquaculture (e.g. salmon, cod, turbot and grouper) released today. This is true even when farming operations implement the best current marine fish farming practices.

University of Victoria marine ecologist Dr. John Volpe and his research team have developed the Global Aquaculture Performance Index (GAPI), an unprecedented system for objectively measuring the environmental performance of fish farming.

"Scale is critical," says Volpe. "Over time, the industry has made strides in reducing the environmental impact per ton of fish, but this does not give a complete picture. Large-scale farming of salmon, for example, even under the best current practices, creates large-scale problems."

The fish farming industry is an increasingly important source of seafood, especially as many wild fisheries are in decline. Yet farming of many marine fish species has been criticized as causing ecological damage. For instance, the researchers found that the relatively new marine finfish aquaculture sector in China and other Asian countries lags in environmental performance.

Adds Volpe: "The fastest growing sector is Asia, where we found a troubling combination of poor environmental performance and rapidly increasing production."

With support from the Lenfest Ocean Program, Volpe and his team developed GAPI, which uses 10 different criteria to assess and score environmental impacts. Incorporating information such as the application of antibiotics and discharge of water pollutants, GAPI allows researchers to gauge which farmed species and countries of production have the best or worst environmental performance.

The researchers examined the environmental impact of marine fish farming per ton of fish produced and the cumulative environmental impact for each country producing a major farmed species.

"GAPI provides a valuable tool for developing environmentally responsible fish farming. Governments can use GAPI to inform policies and regulations to minimize the environmental footprint of fish farming. Farmers can use it to improve production practices. And buyers can use it to compare and select better, more environmentally friendly seafood options," says Chris Mann, senior officer and director of the Pew Environment Group's Aquaculture Standards Project, which collaborated on the work.

For further information on GAPI, including a summary of the methodology and findings, visit www.lenfestocean.org.

The GAPI 2010 report released today is based on 2007 data, the most recent year for which data for all aquaculture indicators are available. GAPI analysis will be updated periodically as additional data becomes available. For additional information, updated research and analysis, please see the GAPI website at www.gapi.ca.

The Lenfest Ocean Program supports scientific research aimed at forging solutions to the challenges facing the global marine environment. The program was established in 2004 by the Lenfest Foundation and is managed by the Pew Environment Group.

The University of Victoria is a national and international leader in the study of the oceans, with expertise as far-ranging as ocean-climate interactions, ocean observation systems, physical and chemical oceanography, marine ecology, coastal resource management and ocean engineering

Aquaculture, once a fledgling industry, now accounts for 50 percent of the fish consumed globally, according to a new report by an international team of researchers. And while the industry is more efficient than ever, it is also putting a significant strain on marine resources by consuming large amounts of feed made from wild fish harvested from the sea, the authors conclude. Their findings are published in the Sept. 7 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

"Aquaculture is set to reach a landmark in 2009, supplying half of the total fish and shellfish for human consumption," the authors wrote. Between 1995 and 2007, global production of farmed fish nearly tripled in volume, in part because of rising consumer demand for long-chain omega-3 fatty acids. Oily fish, such as salmon, are a major source of these omega-3s, which are effective in reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease, according to the National Institutes of Health.

"The huge expansion is being driven by demand," said lead author Rosamond L. Naylor, a professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Program on Food Security and the Environment. "As long as we are a health-conscious population trying to get our most healthy oils from fish, we are going to be demanding more of aquaculture and putting a lot of pressure on marine fisheries to meet that need."

Fishmeal and fish oil

To maximize growth and enhance flavor, aquaculture farms use large quantities of fishmeal and fish oil made from less valuable wild-caught species, including anchoveta and sardine. "With the production of farmed fish eclipsing that of wild fish, another major transition is also underway: Aquaculture's share of global fishmeal and fish oil consumption more than doubled over the past decade to 68 percent and 88 percent, respectively," the authors wrote.

In 2006, aquaculture production was 51.7 million metric tons, and about 20 million metric tons of wild fish were harvested for the production of fishmeal. "It can take up to five pounds of wild fish to produce one pound of salmon, and we eat a lot of salmon," said Naylor, the William Wrigley Senior Fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

One way to make salmon farming more environmentally sustainable is to simply lower the amount of fish oil in the salmon's diet. According to the authors, a mere 4 percent reduction in fish oil would significantly reduce the amount of wild-caught fish needed to produce a pound of salmon – from 5 pounds of wild fish to just 3.9 pounds. In contrast, reducing fishmeal use by 4 percent would have very little environmental impact, they said.

"Reducing the amount of fish oil in the salmon's diet definitely gets you a lot more bang for the buck than reducing the amount of fishmeal," Naylor said. "Our thirst for long-chain omega-3 oils will continue to put a lot of strain on marine ecosystems, unless we develop commercially viable alternatives soon."

Naylor and her co-authors pointed to several fish-feed substitutes currently being investigated, including protein made from grain and livestock byproducts, and long-chain omega-3 oils extracted from single-cell microorganisms and genetically modified land plants. "With appropriate economic and regulatory incentives, the transition toward alternative feedstuffs could accelerate, paving the way for a consensus that aquaculture is aiding the ocean, not depleting it," the authors wrote.

Vegetarian fish

Fishmeal and fish oil are important staples at farms that produce carnivorous fish, including salmon, trout and tuna. But vegetarian species, such as Chinese carp and tilapia, can be raised on feed made from plants instead of wild-caught fish. That's one reason why farm-raised vegetarian fish have long been considered environmentally friendly.

In the early 1990s, vegetarian fish farms began adding small amounts of fishmeal in their feed to increase yields. However, between 1995 and 2007, farmers actually reduced the share of fishmeal in carp diets by 50 percent and in tilapia diets by nearly two-thirds, according to the PNAS report. Nevertheless, in 2007, tilapia and carp farms together consumed more than 12 million metric tons of fishmeal – more than 1.5 times the amount used by shrimp and salmon farms combined.

"Our assumption about farmed tilapia and carp being environmentally friendly turns out to be wrong in aggregate, because the sheer volume is driving up the demand," Naylor said. "Even the small amounts of fishmeal used to raise vegetarian fish add up to a lot on a global scale." Removing fishmeal from the diet of tilapia and carp would have a very positive impact on the marine environment, she added.

Regulating fisheries

On the policy front, Naylor pointed to the 2006 California Sustainable Oceans Act and the proposed National Offshore Aquaculture Act, which call for reductions in the use of fishmeal and fish oil in feeds. She also applauded plans by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration to develop a comprehensive national policy that addresses fisheries management issues posed by aquaculture. "No matter how much is done from the demand side, it is essential that there be regulation on the supply side as well," Naylor said. "You won't prevent the collapse of anchoveta, sardine and other wild fisheries unless those fisheries are carefully regulated."

Other co-authors of the PNAS study are Ronald W. Hardy, University of Idaho; Dominique P. Bureau and Katheline Hua, University of Guelph (Canada); Alice Chiu, Stanford; Matthew Elliott, Sea Change Management; Anthony P. Farrell and Ian Forster, Centre for Aquaculture and Environmental Research (Canada); Delbert M. Gatlin, Texas A&M University and the Norwegian Centres of Excellence; Rebecca J. Goldburg, Pew Charitable Trusts; and Peter D. Nichols, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (Australia).

The PNAS report was supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

This past autumn, the Freeman Spogli Institute ( FSI ) in conjunction with the Woods Institute for the Environment launched a program on Food Security and the Environment (FSE) to address the deficit in academia and, on a larger scale, the global dialogue surrounding the critical issues of food security, poverty, and environmental degradation.

“Hunger is the silent killer and moral outrage of our time; however, there are few university programs in the United States designed to study and solve the problem of global food insecurity,” states program director Rosamond L. Naylor. “FSE’s dual affiliation with FSI and Stanford’s new Woods Institute for the Environment position it well to make significant steps in this area.”

Through a focused research portfolio and an interdisciplinary team of scholars led by Naylor and Center for Environmental Science and Policy (CESP) co-director Walter P. Falcon, FSE aims to design new approaches to solve these persistent problems, expand higher education on food security and the environment at Stanford, and provide direct policy outreach.

Productive food systems and their environmental consequences form the core of the program. Fundamentally, the FSE program seeks to understand the food security issues that are of paramount interest to poor countries, the food diversification challenges that are a focus of middle-income nations, and the food safety and subsidy concerns prominent in richer nations.

CHRONIC HUNGER IN A TIME OF PROSPERITY

Although the world’s supply of basic foods has doubled over the past century, roughly 850 million people (12 percent of the world’s population) suffer from chronic hunger. Food insecurity deaths during the past 20 years outnumber war deaths by a factor of at least 5 to 1. Food insecurity is particularly widespread in agricultural regions where resource scarcity and environmental degradation constrain productivity and income growth.

FSE is currently assessing the impacts of climate variability on food security in Asian rice economies. This ongoing project combines the expertise of atmospheric scientists, agricultural economists, and policy analysts to understand and mitigate the adverse effects of El Niño-related climate variability on rice production and food security. As a consequence of Falcon and Naylor’s long-standing roles as policy advisors in Indonesia, models developed through this project have already been embedded into analytical units within Indonesia’s Ministries of Agriculture, Planning, and Finance. “With such forecasts in hand, the relevant government agencies are much better equipped to mitigate the negative consequences of El Niño events on incomes and food security in the Indonesian countryside,” explain Falcon and Naylor.

FOOD DIVERSIFICATION AND INTENSIFICATION

With rapid income growth, urbanization, and population growth in developing economies, priorities shift from food security to the diversification of agricultural production and consumption. “Meat production is projected to double by 2020,” states Harold Mooney, CESP senior fellow and an author of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. As a result, land once used to provide grains for humans now provides feed for hogs and poultry.

These trends will have major consequences for the global environment—affecting the quality of the atmosphere, water, and soil due to nutrient overloads; impacting marine fisheries both locally and globally through fish meal use; and threatening human health, as, for example, through excessive use of antibiotics.

An FSE project is analyzing the impact of intensive livestock production and assessing the environmental effects to gain a better understanding of the true costs of this resource-intensive system. A product of this work recently appeared as a Policy Forum piece in the December 9, 2005, issue of Science titled "Losing the Links Between Livestock and Land."

Factors contributing to the global growth of livestock systems, lead author Naylor notes, are declining feed-grain prices, relatively inexpensive transportation costs, and trade liberalization. “But many of the true costs remain largely unaccounted for,” she says, including destruction of forests and grasslands to provide farmland for feed crops destined not for humans but for livestock; utilization of large quantities of freshwater; and nitrogen losses from croplands and animal manure.

Naylor and her research team are seeking better ways to track all costs of livestock production, especially hidden costs of ecosystem degradation and destruction. “What is needed is a re-coupling of crop and livestock systems,” Naylor says, “if not physically, then through pricing and other policy mechanisms that reflect social costs of resource use and ecological abuse.” Such policies “should not significantly compromise the improving diets of developing countries, nor should they prohibit trade,” Naylor adds. Instead, they should “focus on regulatory and incentive-based tools to encourage livestock and feed producers to internalize pollution costs, minimize nutrient run-off, and pay the true price of water.”

LOOKING AHEAD

The future of the program on Food Security and the Environment looks bright and expansive. Building on existing research at Stanford, researchers are identifying avenues in the world’s least developed countries to enhance orphan crop production— crops with little international trade and investment, but high local value for food and nutrition security. This work seeks to identify advanced genetic and genomic strategies, and natural resource management initiatives, to improve orphan crop yields, enhance crop diversity, and increase rural incomes through orphan crop production.

Another priority research area is development of biofuels. As countries seek energy self-reliance and look for alternatives to food and feed subsidies under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, the conversion of corn, sugar, and soybeans to ethanol and other energy sources becomes more attractive. New extraction methods are making the technology more efficient, and high crude oil prices are fundamentally changing the economics of biomass energy conversion. A large switch by key export food and feed suppliers, such as the United States and Brazil, to biofuels could fundamentally alter export prices, and hence the world food and feed situation. A team of FSE researchers will assess the true costs of these conversions.

The FSE program recently received a grant through the Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies to initiate new research activities. One project links ongoing research at Stanford on the environmental and resource costs of industrial livestock production and trade to assess the extent of Brazil’s rainforest destruction for soybean production. “Tens of millions of hectares of native grassland and rainforest are currently being cleared for soybean production to supply the global industrial livestock sector,” says Naylor. An interdisciplinary team will examine strategies to achieve an appropriate balance between agricultural commodity trade, production practices, and conservation in Brazil’s rainforest states.

“I’m extremely pleased to see the rapid growth of FSE and am encouraged by the recent support provided through the new Presidential Fund,” states Naylor. “It enables the program to engage faculty members from economics, political science, biology, civil and environmental engineering, earth sciences, and medicine—as well as graduate students throughout the university—in a set of collaborative research activities that could significantly improve human well-being and the quality of the environment.”