Summary
This paper critically analyzes two factors affecting the salmon industry. Firstly, there has been a notable increase in large-scale salmon production facilities located on land instead of in the sea. Secondly, there is a growing trend of using land-based commodity crops as a major component of salmon feed. The paper takes an ecological perspective and considers how ecological infrastructures are being reshaped and what impact this has on the environment and non-human animals. The authors examine four main themes related to land-based salmon farming; a controlled environment, sustainable production of salmon, financing land-based infrastructure, and local resistance by environmental NGOs and local actors.
Of the aspects analyzed in this paper, aquafeed is argued to have the most impact on the environment. The author disputes common claims that shifting to grain to feed landed salmon, from their natural diet of pelagic fish, is beneficial to the environment and helps protect natural fish. Instead, terrestrial and aquatic environments will be further impacted by the known effects of industrial agriculture. On the other hand, it is problematic to continue feeding landed salmon their natural diet of pelagic as farming these fish has had devastating effects on the livelihoods and food security of people living on the West African coast. Additionally, the authors suggest it is unlikely that the demand of salmon feed can be met in the short term.
The article highlights that every approach to farming landed salmon is likely to have negative impacts on the aquatic and terrestrial environment.
In this paper, we critically assess two key shifts in the global salmon aquaculture sector: first, the development of large land-based salmon production facilities and, second, the increased reliance on land-based commodity crops in salmon feed. Proponents of this ‘landing’ of salmon aquaculture’s infrastructure promise sustainable solutions to the environmental challenges of farming in and from the sea. But the firmness of land is no predictor of a given or stable form of capital accumulation, nor does it represent a straightforward ‘sustainable solution’ to the ecological challenges in conventional salmon farming. We show how productive and speculative capital underpin these new projects, but also how these projects meet varied frictions which raises questions about whether ‘landing’ infrastructures represents a sustainable alternative to conventional salmon aquaculture. We explore this development in the context of recent debates on infrastructures as they relate to environments, ecologies and the nonhuman. We argue that analysing industrial aquaculture, and more broadly industrial animal agriculture, through the lens of environmental or ecological infrastructures, helps to bring into focus the massive and global infrastructuring of nature and nonhumans. In turn, we are able to illuminate the political, social and ecological implications of the industrial containment and feeding of animals. This article contributes to the emerging field of scholarship on ecological infrastructures by critically assessing the landing of salmon in response to the socio-ecological crisis in conventional salmon aquaculture.