MALNUTRITION: Aquaculture "vital" to Asia's food security

22 September 2010 (IRIN) - Improvements in aquaculture could be an important tool in combating Asia's increasing food insecurity, specialists say. "We have to produce 30 million more [metric] tons of fish - 50 percent more - by 2030 or people will not be able to eat," Rohana Subasinghe, a senior aquaculture specialist for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told IRIN from Phuket, Thailand. "There is nothing more we can bring from the sea so the gap has to be filled by aquaculture." Subasinghe's remarks coincide with the beginning of a four-day global conference on fish farming, an industry that provides nearly half the world's fish for human consumption. Scientists and policy-makers from 60 countries have gathered in Phuket to discuss the industry's progress since the last meeting in Bangkok 10 years ago. FAO estimates more than half the world's undernourished people - 642 million - live in the Asia and Pacific.