Abstract
The anxiety about the risk of international food shortages is getting larger in the face of population growth, climate change and other concerns. On the other hand, the efforts to examine marine resource utilization addressing food-supply issues, such as large-scale offshore fish farming, ocean fertilization, etc. are expected to increase. A preliminary study to assess the social and economic impacts of such technologies is thus an essential component of strategy and policies for ocean development. In the present study, a food economy model including marine products is applied to investigate the effect of ocean fertilization. The sensitivity of the model for the external scenarios such as population, GDP, and crop yield, are also examined. The results show that the prediction for the supply of fishery products, which will stay low level, be almost robust under those scenarios. It is indicated that increasing fisheries products could become an effective measure to improve the self-sufficiency of food in Japan. It is clarified that ocean fertilization will be effective when it is applied to the fish species whose stock abundance is small.
