Last updated on May 24, 2015
From an op-ed published this summer in the New York Times:
Sending all this wild fish abroad and then importing farmed fish to replace it is enough to make you want to take a stiff drink and go to bed. But when you wake up and reach for your bagel, surprise! The fish swap will get you again.
The United States imports seafood in increasing numbers, even for salmon, which it has in abundance.
…
The prevalence of imported farmed salmon on our bagels is doubly curious because the United States possesses all the wild salmon it could possibly need. Five species of Pacific salmon return to Alaskan rivers every year, generating several hundred million pounds of fish flesh every year. Where does it all go?
Again, abroad. Increasingly to Asia. Alaska, by far our biggest fish-producing state, exports around three-quarters of its salmon.
To make things triply strange, a portion of that salmon, after heading across the Pacific, returns to us: Because foreign labor is so cheap, many Alaskan salmon are caught in American waters, frozen, defrosted in Asia, filleted and boned, refrozen and sent back to us. Pollock also make this Asian round trip, as do squid — and who knows what else?
When you dig into the fish-trade data, things get murkier. In its 2012 summary of the international fish trade, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration noted, somewhat bizarrely, that its definition of exports “may include merchandise of both domestic and foreign origin.”
So, for example, when fish sticks are cut from blocks of imported “white fish” in an American facility and exported to a foreign country, they are classified as American domestic production. Meanwhile some of our imports, as with an unknowable portion of our salmon, are taken from American waters, reprocessed elsewhere and brought back home. …
And that’s my point. Globalization, that unseen force that supposedly eliminates inefficiencies through the magic of trade, has radically disconnected us from our seafood supply.
Before anything else, let me just state this: I have a tremendous amount of respect for Paul Greenberg, who wrote that op-ed. Among other things, Greenberg wrote Four Fish, which is possibly one of the best essays ever written on food of any kind, and which is a prerequisite for anyone working on the economics of fish and seafood, as I am and have been for a couple years now.
That said, the op-ed I quote above is somewhat confused–and confusing–in how emotional it gets in the face of phenomena that have a rational explanation.
Indeed, while it certainly looks as though there is a paradox in the fact that the United States–among many other countries–imports the same fish and seafood that it exports, an economist would argue that this is only the appearance of a paradox, for two reasons:
1. All fish is not created equal. That is, while a country may be simultaneously exporting and importing cod, what we refer to as “cod” can mean many different things, from fresh cod fillets to frozen fish sticks made from cod. Whereas some consumers might prefer the former, others prefer the latter. Given the relatively low cost in poorer countries of the low-skilled labor required to process food, it makes perfect sense for rich countries to export fresh foods to poorer countries so it can be processed there, and then import the “same” food. Note my use of quotation marks on “same”: What we casually refer to as the same food really isn’t, i.e., there is an important difference between fresh cod fillets and frozen fish sticks made from cod, and no matter what foodies would like consumers to consume, consumers have their own sovereign preferences. In this case, “importing our own fish” makes perfect sense.
2. The quality exchange. As consumers get wealthier, they start demanding higher quality goods and services. The preceding relationship between demand and income also holds for food (Bennett’s Law is one example of this), and this holds both within and across countries. This means that when we observe, say, the US both exporting tuna to and importing tuna from a poorer country, what might be taking place is a quality exchange. In other words, consumers in the poorer country might only be able to afford canned tuna, whereas US consumers might want to consume (and be able to afford) fresh sushi-grade tuna, in which case “importing our own fish” also makes perfect sense. In a recent working paper titled “Fair Enough? Food Security and the International Trade of Seafood,” Frank Asche, Cathy Roheim, Marty Smith, Sigbjørn Tveteras and I look at this quality exchange and argue that the international trade of seafood does not rob poor countries of their food security, as some might believe. Here is the abstract:
Does international trade make all parties better off? We study the relationship between food security and the international trade of fish and seafood between developing and developed countries. Specifically, we look at and discuss the evolution of trade flows – values, quantities, and prices – between developing and developed countries. The picture that emerges suggests that the quantity of seafood exported from developing countries to developed countries is close to the quantity of seafood imported by developing countries from developed countries. What takes place is a quality exchange: developing countries export high-quality seafood in exchange for lower-quality seafood.
I understand that Greenberg might not like globalization and the fact that we “import our own fish,” but by giving consumers what they want (instead of what foodies want consumers to want) and what they can afford, the international trade of fish and seafood reduces inefficiencies (if anything, it is the imposition of trade barriers that would introduce inefficiencies).
And while I certainly cannot speak to the ecological aspects of the question, I remain unconvinced by (i) the implicit argument that by not trading fish and seafood, we’d somehow be more careful in managing our stocks of fish and seafood, and (ii) arguments about how “disconnected” we are from our food supply. We are utterly disconnected from our supply of clothes (which, surprise, surprise! are also made from agricultural commodities), and no one cares about that. Why is it that we must get all emotional about food?