Indonesia: The Most Overlooked Country in the Global Seafood System

Indonesia is the second-largest seafood producer globally with one of the most diverse seafood systems. The country has a large fisheries sector where landings have almost doubled since 2000, a rapidly growing aquaculture sector, and is one of the two dominant seaweed producers. Still, the Indonesian seafood system has received surprisingly little attention in the international literature. In this paper a review of the Indonesian seafood system from 2000 to 2022 is provided by first discussing the production system, then the seafood trade and estimates of apparent seafood consumption. Given the global stagnation in fisheries landings, the 3 million mt increase in Indonesian landings is highly interesting. The increase is most likely a result of increased exploitation of previously underfished stocks outweighing any yield losses from overfishing in other stocks. The aquaculture sector has had remarkable development with a production growth of about 5 million metric tons since the beginning of the century, and the seaweed production peaked at over 11 million metric tons; however, the three production sectors have all faced challenges that have reduced production in recent years, although only marginally so for fisheries and aquaculture. Indonesian seafood production impacts global markets as the country globally is the sixth largest seafood exporter, but the exports constitute a small share of production.