France’s seafood problem starts elsewhere

On March 6, 2024, Pascal Goumain, the president of Saumon de France, was presenting his company’s salmon pens in Cherbourg as part of France’s food future. In an interview, Goumain described plans to adapt the farm to climate change and pointed to official backing for expansion. “The French Ministry of Agriculture set an objective to farm 20,000 tonnes of salmon in France by 2030,” Goumain said. The promise of fish farming, he argued, is that it is both sustainable and important for food sovereignty. “We should be a leading aquaculture country,” he said, “but we’re falling behind.” The industry and government pitch of aquaculture in France has been straightforward: People want more seafood, the limit of what can be viably pulled from the wild is quickly being reached, and fish farming is the way to meet the growing demand while slowing the collapse of the oceans. “The quantities caught are not sufficient to feed consumers,” former minister of the sea Annick Girardin said in 2021. The Haut-Commissariat au Plan on fish farming echoed the point in 2023, asserting that in a context of climate change and overfishing, the “responsible development” of aquaculture could expand supply witho...