September 6, 2022 — Thanks to decades of increased fishery and aquaculture yields and growing global demand, seafood is one of the most-traded food categories in the world today. However, the volume and value of overseas sales achieved by the industry has slipped in the past few years, according to the latest analysis from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
The 2022 edition of the U.N. body’s biennial “The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture” (SOFIA) report confirms 59.8 million metric tons (MT) of seafood products worth USD 151 billion (EUR 148.4 million) were exported in 2020, the most-recent year for which data is available. This value was down from the record high USD 165 billion (EUR 162.2 billion) that the FAO recorded for 2018, while the live-weight equivalent volume was around 200,000 metric tons (MT) lower.