Prices for Wild Caught and Farmed Fish Continue to Diverge

Recently released data from the U-N indicates that the prices paid for wild-caught and farmed fish continue to diverge from each other. The Food and Agricultural Organization, which is part of the U-N, reports that the price index for wild fish nearly doubled between 1990 and last year. During the same time-frame the price index for farmed fish increased by one fifth. There are a number of factors that could account for the difference including the farmed fish production continues to increase while the amount of wild-caught fish has remained fairly steady for the past 20-years. Global farmed fish production has been increasing for decades and now is comparable to the word-wide production of beef. That has led the sellers of wild-caught fish to target their marketing efforts towards higher end customers and into niche markets that can support a higher price for a premium, high-quality product. The FAO’s Fish Price Index publication shows that fish prices appear to suffer fewer spikes in prices compared to other food sources. From 1990 to 2010 the standard deviation in the Fish Price Index was just 5.6 while the deviation in the overall food price index was 12.2-percent. In the report the FAO notes that this implies that terrestrial foods have a volatility that is twice as high as that for fish. You can find the data about wild and farmed fish prices on the website of the U-N’s Food and Agricultural Organization at www.fao.org. nue to diverge from each other. KDLG’s Mike Mason has the details.