Issues in Modeling Fish to 2020 within a Global Food Model

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management (ICLARM), in collaboration with the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), are presently attempting to model supply and demand for highly aggregated fish categories within the context of IFPRI's IMPACT global food model (Rosegrant et al. 1995). The analytical purpose is to quantify insights on: (a) the increasingly important role of aquaculture in world food and trade, (b) its interaction with rapidly growing livestock production and consumption in developing countries, (c) trade-offs (if any) between low cost food from fish and fishmeal, and (d) trade-offs between the production of high-value fishery exports and food. Important practical issues that arise from this are discussed here. They concern how to aggregate existing country data from hundreds of species into the maximum of 4 to 6 product categories for which it is feasible to specify supply, demand, and trade parameters for each of 36 countries or country groups. On the supply side, major technological differences need to be highlighted (such as aquaculture or capture), whereas on the demand side issues involve aggregating products with similar demand parameters, regardless of how produced. Resolution of the aggregation issues is different for groups of developing and developed countries, because of fundamental differences in the underlying issues. Model structure, interactions with non-fishery food products, available data, practical choices made, and preliminary magnitudes obtained are discussed.