Why? There's plenty of freshwater fish that are farmed around the world. Trout, tilapia, etc.
> It's not enough just to label a country as producer/not producer for a category but rather whether that production is fully stable and internalized in case of disasters/war.
Conversely, many industrialized and wealthy countries can probably shift their production pretty easily. For example, looks like Hungary is doing well on fruit but not on vegetables. This is probably not because it's hard for them to grow vegetables, just that there's no economic incentive to.
Similarly, the two-way legumes / veggies difference between the US and Mexico probably boils down to free-market economics or government subsidies more than to any real agricultural bottlenecks on either side.
Not to a level that could feed the entire country, surely.
The numbers look pretty insane, you can raise many tons of fish in relatively small volumes of water (several hundred kg of fish per year per cubic meter). You just gotta build the ponds/tanks/cages, and the infrastructure to filter the water, supply the oxygen and deliver the feed.
Barring some planetary-scale cataclysm, most of Europe and the US are at no real risk of starving. There are other countries that are at a real risk, but the map doesn't make a clear distinction between "red as a matter of convenience" and "red because they physically can't do it".
Then we will lack whatever was produced on the place where you those new ponds with huge amount of fish.
Most of the richer countries/trade unions have a large meat surplus that could be easily shifted to something else, too.
Obviously nations do have limited surface area and creating new agricultural areas for them would be to the detriment of forests and "nature"
Farmed fish are often fed on fish meal from the ocean - e.g. fish meal made from species that are not eaten by people. Between 5% and 10% of ocean fishing is used for such aquaculture.
Same same as the cattle example in Ireland being fed on imported animal feed.
You can provide the right mix of proteins and fats from algal and insect sources, so this shouldn't be a barrier to increased adoption of fish farming.
(Scaling wastewater and disease management are perhaps greater challenges, but ought not to be intractable either)
> Ireland has very limited horticultural and grain production on account of its topography and climate, and it imports around 80 percent of its animal feed, food, and beverage needs.
Cattle are predominantly grass-fed in Ireland which is largely self-sufficient in grass/silage. Not to minimize the fragility of its economy wrt to food production - but the 80% I imagine is due to the reliance on other EU for fruits, vegetables and grain but these imports are almost exclusively for human consumption.
Ireland also exports a lot of that grass fed beef, so could presumably export less, and consume more of it to replace whatever it could not import.
A lot of other countries are also be both importers and exporters of food. The problem might be that in some places the quality and range of diet might decline.
There's a continuum between 'extensive' and 'intensive' finishing methods - the former takes longer and uses more forage & grass, and is best suited to native breeds. The latter uses more silage & concentrate, and is used for 'continental' breeds.
Dairy cows will also have pelleted additives over the winter, making up to about a quarter of their intake (largely depending on silage quality). But those tend to be mixes of yeast, fats, and digestible fibre so shouldn't necessarily require imports.
It seems like both of these are true: "Cattle are predominantly grass-fed" - yes, but this is seasonal; when they're eating something other than grass, it's an import.
I am unsure how deep this study goes to understand capacity and capability, especially with regards to how each country could adapt.
We also fail at vegetables. But given we are highly leveraged in dairy for export, if we were isolated by trade we could switch up our land use. I am not saying it would be fool proof, but we can grow veggies here. We have an insane amount of arable land contrasted to our population.
The idea we can simply change land use here seems simple too, but much of the agricultural industry has boxed themselves in, applying nasty BS to the ground which used to be not safe to grow veggies for 6 - 7 years bare minimum, though there has been of late, pressure to let the limit slide downwards for the idiots who could not be told that choosing a problem chemicals over some others which took a bit more effort, was going to bite them in the bum.
I have farmed veggies, but in a dry farming situation (no irrigation) so the whole show is at the mercy of the weather. Last few years have been a no go. Many other areas find themselves in a similar situation, water either costs and arm and leg or there's not enough access to it when required.
Ironically the best areas that grew a lot of veggies were (up until 60s, 70s) along the coast up my way Queensland ... much of it gave was to roads and houses that need wet weather insurance during very wet periods ... they are are subject to flooding.
The other factor that governs growing vegetables is the price being offered (knife edge to low) and silly antics like from Queensland sending truck loads of veggies 2000 km to a central depo and then back up along the coast for distribution.
BTW, for farmers, their fuel since the beginning of 2026 has doubled in prices after fuel excise rebate, so in a few months it's going to be very interesting as to what's in the shops that's still affordable by the average worker. The supermarkets here don't miss any upward costs either, applying the real cost by some factor the public might believe is realistic.
[1] https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/australia-pop...
Fish do not obey national boundaries. They don't carry passports. The entire North Atlantic ecosystem needs to be considered as one, along with quotas for sustainability. I'm not sure if it's mathematically possible for all of Europe to hit this "recommended" consumption level from pelagic fish without quickly making them extinct, has anyone checked that?
Short-sighted I agree. It would be worth paying a bit more for security - the same applies to a lot of other things.