MSU-led study reveals $4 billion impact of U.S. aquaculture, wins top award
Ganesh Kumar
A research team led by Mississippi State University scientist Ganesh Kumar received the Editor’s Choice Award from the Journal of the World Aquaculture Society for conducting the most comprehensive economic study of U.S. aquaculture farming to date.
Kumar, a scientist in the university’s Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, collaborated on the study with researchers from the Universities of Florida, Maryland and Alaska, as well as Virginia Tech, Texas State, Texas A&M, Purdue and Auburn. Their findings show that aquaculture farming contributes $4 billion annually to the U.S. economy and supports over 22,000 jobs, many in economically disadvantaged rural and waterfront communities.
“This is a team effort of scientists from MSU and other institutions collecting and analyzing years’ worth of data,” said Kumar, an associate research professor in MSU’s Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture. “It all began with a comprehensive study evaluating the economic contribution of the U.S. catfish industry. That study paved the way to this national effort in quantifying the contribution of all U.S. aquaculture farms.”
The team compiled and analyzed farm-level survey data, gathering insights on revenue and expenditures across U.S. aquaculture farms. Adjusting the data to 2022-dollar values, the scientists used a software platform called IMPLAN to generate the direct, indirect and induced effects -- the latter coming from wages earned by workers in the first two stages -- of total U.S. aquaculture farming, comprised of six major sub-categories.
The aquaculture economist, based at MSU’s Delta Research and Experiment Station in Stoneville, explained that aquaculture farms do not operate in isolation, but rather drive a vast economic network. The study found that aquaculture farms support nearly 96% of the country’s economic sectors to some extent.
“The economic ripple effects of aquaculture work like the heart, supplying blood to the body’s cells through a connected highway of veins and capillaries,” he said. “For example, aquaculture farms purchasing feed for fish are connected to row crop farmers, which are connected to equipment manufacturers, fertilizer companies, gas stations, restaurants and many other industries.”
Kumar emphasized that while the national impacts of the industry are profound, they could be much stronger. The team identified a multitude of regulations -- some dating as far back as the 1910s -- as the most significant impediment to growth of U.S. aquaculture, increasing the cost of production on farms and limiting the industry’s capacity for production. The potential economic impact lost to regulations amounts to $887 million (2022-dollar values) in foregone annual revenue and over 3,600 foregone jobs.
“Our study sheds light on how broadly the aquaculture farming industry impacts the entire U.S. economy, but it also reveals the need for policies that promote food security through increasing domestic aquaculture production, which is more sustainable than imported seafood,” Kumar said.
The work was accomplished through continued support from USDA-ARS, USDA-NIFA, NOAA-Sea Grant, and MAFES funding from 2021-2024.
Mississippi State University is taking care of what matters. Learn more at www.msstate.edu.
Meg Henderson | Agriculture and Natural Resources Marketing
