Landing’ salmon aquaculture

Ecologies, infrastructures and the promise of sustainability

Bibliographic Data

ID8942673
AuthorsSylvia J Martins (0000-0002-9954-4213, Memorial University of Newfoundland, corresponding author), Sarah J Martin, C Mather (0000-0003-0245-5247, Memorial University of Newfoundland), C Knott (0000-0001-7468-5223, Memorial University of Newfoundland), Dean Bavington (Memorial University of Newfoundland)
Year2021
Volume123
Pages47-55
Publication date2021-05-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeoforum (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0016-7185 • E-ISSN: 1872-9398
PublisherElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.04.025
OpenAlexW3161278120
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited45

In this paper, we critically assess two key shifts in the global salmon aquaculture sector: first, the development of large land-based salmon production facilities and, second, the increased reliance on land-based commodity crops in salmon feed. Proponents of this ‘landing’ of salmon aquaculture’s infrastructure promise sustainable solutions to the environmental challenges of farming in and from the sea. But the firmness of land is no predictor of a given or stable form of capital accumulation, nor does it represent a straightforward ‘sustainable solution’ to the ecological challenges in conventional salmon farming. We show how productive and speculative capital underpin these new projects, but also how these projects meet varied frictions which raises questions about whether ‘landing’ infrastructures represents a sustainable alternative to conventional salmon aquaculture. We explore this development in the context of recent debates on infrastructures as they relate to environments, ecologies and the nonhuman. We argue that analysing industrial aquaculture, and more broadly industrial animal agriculture, through the lens of environmental or ecological infrastructures, helps to bring into focus the massive and global infrastructuring of nature and nonhumans. In turn, we are able to illuminate the political, social and ecological implications of the industrial containment and feeding of animals. This article contributes to the emerging field of scholarship on ecological infrastructures by critically assessing the landing of salmon in response to the socio-ecological crisis in conventional salmon aquaculture

Agriculture · Aquaculture · Biology · Business · Capital (architecture · Context (archaeology · Economics · Environmental planning · Environmental resource management · Fish · Fish <Actinopterygii> · Fishery · Geography · Natural resource economics · Sustainability · Sustainable development · Ecology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Microplastics and Plastic Pollution · Water Governance and Infrastructure

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