The world’s top agricultural traders and biotechnology firms are finding novel ways to make fish oil substitutes from grains and algae as they seek to cash in on consumer health fads that have led to a scarcity of the fatty acids commonly found in fish.
Fish are the fastest-growing protein source in a global food supply chain straining to feed a population of nearly 7.5 billion people.
To keep farm-raised fish healthy, they are fed Omega-3 fatty acids that are found in the oil of other fish. The same acids are increasingly popular in fish oil dietary supplements for humans.
The surging demand has pushed fish oil prices to a record high and presented the aquaculture industry with a problem: how to source more fish oil without putting depleted global fish stocks under even more pressure. About 90 percent of marine fish stocks worldwide are already fully or partially over-fished, according to the United Nations.
“We have finite fish oil, growing aquaculture and a world that needs more Omega-3s,” said Mark Griffin, president of animal nutrition at Omega Protein Corp, the biggest U.S. fish oil producer. “They’re going to have to come from somewhere else.”
The short supply has attracted the world’s largest grain traders, such as Cargill Inc., Bunge Ltd., and Archer Daniels Midland Co.
These agricultural giants are in the midst of transforming themselves into food processing and ingredient suppliers as they look to diversify away from bulk trading of grains and raw materials amid a four-year global supply glut.
The $2.4-billion fish oil sector is niche for major grain traders and represents a fraction of their income. But fish oil is the sort of high-return product they are targeting as they grapple with slim margins in their traditional business.
As demand outstripped supply, wholesale prices in top fish oil producer Peru soared to an average of $2,986 per metric ton in 2016, the highest ever recorded.
Global annual production of fish oil has for years been limited to about 1 million tonnes, said Einar Wathne, president of Cargill’s aqua nutrition business, in an interview from Norway.
“It could be a kind of showstopper for growth in aquaculture if we can’t find other sources for these valuable Omega-3 fatty acids,” Wathne said.
Yellow Fields in Montana
Cargill’s plan to produce more fish oil could soon change the color of up to half a million acres of the landlocked Montana prairie, company executives told Reuters.
The firm plans to pay farmers there to grow a new variety of canola, distinctive for its bright yellow flowers. Half a million acres would be eight times as much farmland as is currently planted with canola in the state.
Vegetable oil made from canola is high in Omega-3s, and Cargill teamed up in November with chemical company BASF SE to develop a canola type by 2020 that it will use to make oils for fish food. The new canola is genetically engineered to make long chain omega-3 fatty acids by introducing genes from algae in the ocean, another source of the fats.
A half million acres of canola could produce about 159,000 tonnes of oil—the equivalent of one-fifth of global fish oil supplies.
“It may be appealing, an opportunity to try new crops,” said Tom Clark, one of Montana’s few canola growers. But he added that managing to change farmers’ habits on such a large scale would be challenging.
In addition to Cargill, Dow Chemical is developing its own variety of canola to make oil with similar Omega-3 acids as fish oil, and is counting on Canadian Prairie farmers to grow it.
U.S. seeds giant Monsanto is developing soybeans that can be processed into soy oil with the Omega-3 fatty acids for food products such as baked goods and soups.
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