The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2020

partially covering the producing countries 
are in number of animals rather than weight. 
Hence, they are excluded from the discussion in 
this section.
The high annual growth rates in world 
production of aquatic animals at 10.8 percent 
and 9.5 percent witnessed in the 1980s and 
1990s, respectively, have slowed gradually in the 
third millennium. The average annual growth 
rate was 5.8 percent in the period 2001–2010 and 
4.5 percent in the period 2011–2018 (
Figure 9
). 
Despite the slow growth at the world level, 
a high growth rate in the period 2009–2018 
was still observed in a number of countries, 
including major producers such as Indonesia 
(12.4 percent), Bangladesh (9.1 percent), Egypt 
(8.4 percent) and Ecuador (12 percent).
Contribution to total fishery production
Based on time-series data of major species 
groups, world aquaculture production has 
progressively surpassed that of capture fisheries. 
The “farming more than catch” milestones 
were reached in 1970 for aquatic algae, in 1986 
for freshwater fishes, in 1994 for molluscs, in 
1997 for diadromous fishes, and in 2014 for 
crustaceans. However, despite the increasing 
output from global aquaculture, farming of 
marine fishes is unlikely to overtake marine 
capture production in the future.
The contribution of world aquaculture 
to world fish production has constantly 
increased, reaching 46.0 percent in 2016–18, 
up from 25.7 percent in 2000. By excluding the 
largest producer, China, this share reached 
29.7 percent in 2018 in the rest of the world, 
compared with 12.7 percent in 2000. At the 
regional level, aquaculture accounted for 
16–18 percent of total fish production in 
Africa, the Americas and Europe, followed 
by 12.7 percent in Oceania. The share of 
aquaculture in Asian fish production (excluding 
China) rose to 42 percent in 2018, up from 
19.3 percent in 2000 (
Figure 10
).
In 2018, 39 countries, located across all regions 
except Oceania, produced more aquatic animals 
from farming than fishing. These countries, 
home to about half of the world population, 
harvested 63.6 million tonnes of farmed fish, 
while their combined capture production was 
26 million tonnes. Aquaculture accounted for 
less than half but over 30 percent of total fish 
production in another 22 countries in 2018, 
including several major fish producers such as 
Indonesia (42.9 percent), Norway (35.2 percent), 
Chile (37.4 percent), Myanmar (35.7 percent) 
and Thailand (34.3 percent).
A lack of reporting by 35–40 percent of 
the producing countries, coupled with 
insufficient quality and completeness in 
reported data, hinders FAO’s efforts to 
present an accurate and more detailed picture 
of world aquaculture development status 
and trends. FAO received 119 national data 
reports in 2018, representing 87.6 percent 
(71.9 million tonnes, excluding aquatic plants) 
of total food fish production by volume. 
Several non-reporting countries regularly 
publish reports on fisheries and aquaculture. 
These reports were used by FAO to estimate, 
production from non-reporting countries at 
12.4 percent (10.1 million tonnes) of the total 
production. The remaining data are official 
statistics collected on an ad hoc basis from a 
few countries that did not respond officially 
to FAO’s request for national data.
Among the top ten countries with the 
largest total farmed and wild production 
in 2018, four exceed the 50 percent mark of 
aquaculture production as a percentage of 
total fish production (i.e. China 76.5 percent, 
India 57 percent, Viet Nam 55.3 percent and 
Bangladesh 56.2 percent); the other six are