Aquaculture is poised to grow,
but faces a key bottleneck in its supply chain.

Aquaculture depends on
fishmeal, fish oil, and krill
from marine animals.

Rising prices and supply instability of marine animals
cause industry instability.
We need substitutes, so aquaculture can continue to grow.
The F3 Team will launch a global challenge
to help farms move away from marine animal ingredients
to Future Proof Aquaculture.

F3 Future of Fish Feed is an endorsed UN Ocean Decade Action.

OVERVIEW

Fish farming, or aquaculture, provides more than half of the world’s seafood and is one of the fastest growing food sectors today. The diets of some of our most popular seafood choices —like salmon and other carnivorous fish—rely heavily on wild-caught marine ingredients. Many, such as forage fish and krill, are at the bottom of the food chain and sustain whole ecosystems as well as provide ingredients that are important inputs for farmed seafood. Because farmed seafood depends on a wild resource, there is a risk of over-depletion of wild-catch that threatens the production of farmed fish itself – and can cause ecosystem collapse simultaneously.

To support healthy, resilient ocean ecosystems and help future-proof seafood production, F3 – Future of Fish Feed hosts a series of contests that challenge the industry to develop substitutes for wild-caught marine ingredients in aquaculture. The existence of new substitutes and novel ingredients creates new sources of nutrition, and diversifies the supply chain for feed. With a lesser reliance on wild-catch whose availability fluctuates, with the substitution of new ingredients, aquaculture supply chains will become more resilient. Aquaculture can continue to grow, and decrease the demand pressure on wild-catch, helping ecosystems to flourish for future generations.

THE CURRENT F3 CHALLENGE: FARMS

The current F3 Challenge aims to reward farms that successfully produce and sell the most farmed fish fed without using any marine animal ingredients—including, but not limited to fishmeal, fish oil, krill, squid or clams.

If fish farms adopt new, nutritionally equivalent novel ingredients, ecosystems will be relieved of a major source of demand pressure that threatens their long-term health and stability. Encouraging new ingredients also enhances food security, because farms will be able to grow farmed seafood despite any fluctuations in supply of marine animal ingredients. In other words, the F3 Challenge aims to reward farms whose supply chains are future-proofed.

To win, fish farmers will need to:

  1. Grow fish using feeds that contain no marine animal ingredients
  2. The winner(s) will be those farms that sell the most fish without using marine animal ingredients. Successful sales of potentially higher-priced farmed fish implicitly depends on market differentiation, on stories of how the fish are more responsibly fed and are positive for consumers.

TWO Award Categories:

    • Carnivorous near-term (~2 years)
    • Carnivorous longer-term (~3 years)
    • $50,000 USD prize per category

Eventually, our hope is that fish that are responsibly fed without marine animal ingredients, will be preferred and understood as well as “insect-fed” chicken or “grass-fed” beef.

As in prior challenges, we do not explicitly oppose the use of ‘waste to feed’ or the use of fish or krill or other marine byproducts, but maintain the goal of marine animal-ingredient free feeds because it is easier to test because of the difficulty of distinguishing marine byproducts from wild catch. Adopting novel ingredients also encourages those businesses, whose alternative sources of nutrition can take the pressure off of wild-catch. It also enhances food security, as wild-catch continues to vacillate in availability, and even decline, underlining the need for new sources of nutrition.

Fish farms can register to receive updates about the challenge and be notified when entry opens.

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PAST F3 CHALLENGES

Learn more about the previous challenges and their winners.

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