In a time when the commercial fishing community faces challenges on many fronts, ensuring seafood becomes an integral part of national food systems requires more than hard work on the water.
As political opportunities evolve, the seafood sector must strengthen its advocacy efforts to gain the support it needs from the halls of Washington, D.C., to local communities. Noah Oppenheim, principal at Homarus Strategies and coordinator of the Fishing Communities Coalition, kicked off a recent panel at the Pacific Marine Expo by emphasizing the need for increased advocacy and action. “We need to re-establish seafood systems,” Oppenheim said. “We need to ensure that we are getting the support we need from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to support seafood and commercial fisheries as members of our domestic food system.”
One of the most pressing issues for the seafood industry is the lack of attention given to aquatic and marine food systems despite their critical role in global and national food security. According to Josh Stoll, a faculty member at the University of Maine’s School of Marine Sciences and the founder of the Local Catch Network, this issue is starkly apparent when looking at federal funding. “In the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s budget, seafood-related grants make up only 0.5 percent of the total,” Stoll pointed out. “Of that, 80 percent goes to aquaculture, leaving wild-capture fisheries with a tiny portion of that 0.5 percent.”
Stoll’s research, which analyzed USDA grants across the past six years, revealed just how underfunded the seafood sector is in comparison to the terrestrial agriculture sector. “In any given year, the USDA distributes around $31 billion in grants, but only a fraction of that supports seafood,” he noted. “That’s where the gap lies, and we need to address it if we’re serious about integrating seafood into our national policies.”
read more at nationalfisherman.com.
