Lessons from the Faroes
Salmon Scotland chief executive Tavish Scott reflects on a recent visit to the Faroe Islands and the geopolitics of the seafood economy.
The Faroese economy depends on seafood, reminding me of home in Shetland.
At the end of September, my opposite numbers from Canada, Norway, Chile, Iceland and Ossur from Faroe all met in Tórshavn.
We discussed the opportunities for seafood in an ever-growing worldwide population with an insatiable appetite for protein.
How will the world be able to produce sustainable food for a global population projected to grow by 10 million by 2050?
The obvious and only answer is seafood. Consumers will not allow the destruction of the Amazon rainforest to allow large scale cattle ranching, nor will people accept other forms of production that cannot meet sustainability criteria or metrics on CO2 emissions.
On the other side of the debate, consumers will not wear the hypocrisy of green politicians or anti-protein campaigners who claim that they alone want to protect the planet.
Here is the reality: China buys resources including food from wherever. It also produces food with standards that would not necessarily accord to the level that consumers here take for granted.
And China is by no means alone. The Ukrainian war has disrupted trade to eastern Europe, Russia and other nations that are keeping close to Moscow for geopolitical reasons, such as an arms deal or some such equivalent.
That means for all the pious talk in various international capitals by presidents and prime ministers, international trade continues.
So given an imperfect world, what is the position back at home? The Faroes provides a striking contrast to the ambivalent attitude towards business from the Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament.
Faroes fish farms
Islands with a pride in seafood
I flew into Vágar Airport on a bright, sunny day; the Airbus A320 banked hard left over the mountains and down the fjord. Ewes appeared out of the starboard windows, and we landed on a runway first built by 6,000 RAF staff in the Second World War.
Salmon farming is at the heart of the modern-day Faroese economy.
As much as 95% of the islands’ exports are seafood, and salmon is more than half of that.
We spent a day with Bakkafrost on its feed business, a hatchery at Strond near Klaksvík, and then with CEO Regin Jacobson at the company’s headquarters based around a processing facility exporting 6kg fish to China.
The Faroes embrace business innovation, success and are proud of what seafood brings, means and is to the country’s economy.
Klaksvík is a town of around 6,000 people: a seafood town a little smaller than Lerwick, while the Faroes have 55,000 people across 18 inhabited islands.
The latest tunnel – all 11km of it – was completed in 2020 between the capital Tórshavn and Eysturoy. It is economically transformational, allowing salmon, fish and everything else to cut journey times. Just what Shetland and other Scottish islands need but seem so far from achieving.
Amid a successful pelagic fleet, salmon farming is evolving and growing; every Faroese salmon farm site has moved in the last 15 years.
A policy based on environmental and economic criteria has adapted to the needs of a modern sector. But in Scotland the opposite is true.
Despite the independent Griggs report of February 2022 saying that fish farms should move, the consenting and planning system has not moved one inch.
Tórshavn, capital of the Faroe Islands
Faroes is a good place to consider feed
Rich fishing grounds are on the doorstep; the local pelagic industry catches blue whiting to be used in fish feed.
While the marine content of Faroese-produced feed has declined, it is still notably higher than elsewhere as my colleagues from across the globe observed.
As the Faroese point out, fish taken from an internationally negotiated quota that is managed as a sustainable fishery is the right thing to do.
The alternative would be to import raw material produced elsewhere. The sustainability of that option is not attractive.
The continuing war in Ukraine, which shows no sign of ending, has been a disrupter of fish feed ingredients just as it has slowed the availability of grain to countries dependent on that. Bakkafrost’s feed company demonstrated that all plant proteins and oil is non-GMO, while soybeans are certified, and there is no use of palm oil nor any use of ingredients that would be grown in areas threatened by deforestation.
When there can be a reasoned discussion about marine content, based on fish performance and biology, certification and sustainability criteria, then we can move forward.
But where the debate dips into black and white – marine content good or bad, then it is more challenging.
The EU and coastal states around the North Atlantic are in the middle of pelagic quota negotiations.
As if there are not plenty of issues to deal with at a domestic sea farm level, keeping an eye on the geopolitics of fish matters too. Especially in Tórshavn.
