The exports of the Blue Pacific Continent have been dominated for decades by agricultural products and to some extent by agricultural services, such as skilled seasonal labour.
Notably global trade is setting the standard for stiffer competition, coupled with consumer behaviour favouring healthy, organic products. Together, the opportunity for new, specialist, unusual, unique high-value – crops and their products could be worthwhile in terms of return on investment and increased export revenue for the producer countries. But what might these products be?
Conversely, Pacific Island countries have the largest collective oceanic economic exclusion zone (EEZ) in the world – see table below. But to date, food production from this giant resource has been based mostly on harvesting schooling pelagic predatory finfish (like tuna), which is becoming more difficult to sustain – with respect to miles travelled to make the catch, declining catch, effects on the fish stocks themselves, and wider biodiversity.
Indeed, this can and does mean higher prices for the catch in the medium term – but for how long can this endure? Are there any other options? There are. And they may seem surprising.
|
|
EEZ SIZES by country/ranking |
|
|
World ranking |
|
km² |
|
1 |
France* |
11,691,000 |
|
2 |
United States |
11,351,000 |
|
3 |
Australia |
8,505,348 |
|
6 |
Indonesia |
6,159,032 |
|
9 |
New Zealand |
4,420,565 |
|
12 |
Kiribati |
3,441,810 |
|
14 |
Federated States of Micronesia |
2,996,419 |
|
16 |
Papua New Guinea |
2,402,288 |
|
19 |
Marshall Islands |
1,990,530 |
|
20 |
Cook Islands |
1,960,027 |
|
23 |
Solomon Islands |
1,589,477 |
|
27 |
Fiji |
1,282,978 |
|
39 |
Tuvalu |
749,790 |
|
40 |
Vanuatu |
663,251 |
|
41 |
Tonga |
659,558 |
|
43 |
Palau |
603,978 |
|
63 |
Niue |
316,584 |
|
64 |
Nauru |
308,480 |
|
92 |
Samoa |
127,950 |
|
Total of PIFS EEZs excluding French Polynesia and New Caledonia* |
19,093,120 |
|
*Note: The huge EEZs of French Polynesia and New Caledonia contribute to the world’s greatest single EEZ: that of France.
Vegan and vegetarian seafood
Perhaps an alternative is to look down the food chain from the hard-to-catch top-end predators, to harvesting natural organisms that are far more abundant. Vegetarian and vegan seafoods, seaweeds and oceanic algae are examples worth investigating.
They may at first sound like an unlikely definition – almost a contradiction in terms – but here lies an enormous, and as yet almost entirely untapped, producer supply market for the region. Southeast Asian countries such as Korea and Singapore are far more advanced in the aquamarine sector. In fact, in South Korea – one of the most established seaweed growing countries in the world – farmers are struggling to keep up with the ever-growing export demand.
Today, seaweed is suddenly a hot global commodity. According to an article in the New York Times, seaweed production is attracting new money and new purpose in all kinds of new places because of its potential to help tame some of the hazards of the modern age, not least climate change. - New York Times.
There are some additional surprises in this development. For instance, in London, a start-up is using seaweed to produce a plastic substitute. In Australia and Hawaii, other companies are competing to grow certain seaweeds for livestock feed that can cut the methane produced when cows belch. And elsewhere, researchers are studying just how much carbon dioxide can be sequestered by seaweed farms, as investors investigate this new source of carbon credits for polluters to offset their greenhouse gas emissions.
In the Blue Pacific, there is great potential in the development of vegan seafood alternatives. Like those being researched by The Seafood Alternative project, which is backed by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund. Since 2021, a team of 10 people has been working on algae’s transformation into alternatives for seafood, with a focus on smoked salmon, canned tuna, caviar and tarama. They are creating microalgae-based fish substitutes to meet the increasing demand for sustainable food products, and to contribute to better human health and healthier oceans.
One great advantage of a sea-based vegan product is that, unlike tofu, it already has a distinctive ‘seafood’ flavour all of its own. That’s because all the animals that feed on the algae take on its taste. So, it’s easy to think it tastes just like calamari, for instance.
In August 2023, Food Ingredients 1st Food Ingredients First | Food Industry News and Analysis published an article titled ‘Vegan calamari: Researchers develop 3D printed ink made from microalgae and mung bean protein’.
In the introduction it stated: “US-based researchers are presenting a novel approach for creating vegan calamari, using 3D printed ink made from microalgae protein and mung bean protein. Their proof-of-concept calamari rings can be air-fried and stand out for their protein content. The concept comes amid continued pressure on worldwide fish stocks and a rise in demand for ocean-friendly seafood alternatives.
“Some microalgae already have a ‘fishy’ taste,” says one scientist who is interviewed. This makes them a good candidate to use in the squid-ring analogy. And mung bean protein is an underused waste product from manufacturing starch noodles, also called cellophane or glass noodles, which are a popular ingredient in many Asian dishes.
Likewise, seaweed products for the cosmetics industry – like nama (Caulerpa racemosa), a unique aquaculture commodity and species of sea grape that grows wild in lagoon waters of the remote Yasawa Island of Fiji and elsewhere – are bound to grow into well-defined niche markets.
The advantage each of these products have – and those that follow in this short analysis – is that they all have terrific backstories, complete with stunning visuals. This can certainly help with marketing.
Niche-market foods
One truism of marketing is that a niche market – if extended worldwide – still constitutes a significant number of potential customers. Especially from the perspective of a limited production base.
The other is that any niche market can grow – and spectacularly – in terms of sales statistics, if effective messaging is employed in the promotion of the products.
And so it will be with gluten-free flours. There’s a rapidly growing awareness of gluten intolerance issues among consumers around the world, and the Pacific has the products to alleviate these concerns and provide the answers, in breadfruit, banana, cassava, and taro flours.
Jackfruit is also ever-growing in its popularity as a protein substitute in vegan and vegetarian cooking. More market potential for what was previously thought of as a niche product.
For all these products, an associated growth industry lies in the area of cookbooks, cuisine television programmes and online cooking courses based around them. And now’s not the time to overlook the potential of fresh or frozen (and beautifully packaged) versions of them too.
Chocolate and coffee are, deservedly, pivotal worldwide commodities in the FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) market. But both their base products – the raw materials from agricultural production in traditional growing areas – are facing significant climate change-induced challenges to their output levels. Pasifika varieties of cacao and coffee beans stand to take advantage of this. All with the added marketing benefit of a great story to tell.
