Mark Godfrey is an Irish journalist covering the agriculture and fisheries sectors in Asia, with a focus on China. Proficient in Mandarin, he has frequently traveled across China's fisheries and aquaculture regions and learned the inner workings of China's corporate world during a nearly three-year stint at the Financial Times' “China Confidential” publication. He has also reported widely across Southeast Asia and the former Soviet Union. He has educational certificates in agriculture and food science, as well as Mandarin.
Author Archive
A tough year for Joyvio Food has put the spotlight on China’s foreign direct investment in seafood assets.
The firm, which owns Chilean salmon producer Australis Seafoods, saw its stock price fall by 20 percent in February, when the firm flagged large losses due to a softening of Chinese demand for salmon as well as a rise in input costs and a jump in the interest rates on Joyvio’s debt repayments. Composite feed costs at Joyvio
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World Trade Organization negotiators are returning to the difficult issue of setting rules on subsidies that lead to overcapacity and overfishing in the world’s oceans.
Negotiators are meeting 20 March for the first in an effort to extend last year’s WTO agreement partially limiting harmful fisheries subsidies. Just three nations have thus far ratified the agreement, including the Seychelles on 10 March, with two-thirds of WTO
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Efforts to reduce illegal fishing through improved transparency and monitoring will have to be matched with increased funding for enforcement by poorer coastal states, according to the head of a program helping detect illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in several regions.
The increased capacity of monitoring systems has made detection of illegal fishing more doable “but funding is badly needed to help coastal nations act on
… Read MoreNorway Fisheries State Secretary Vidar Ulriksen snaps back against complaints of Irish organizations
Brexit appears to have added to tensions in the busy fishing waters in the west Atlantic, with tempers rising intalks between the European Union and Norway and a rise in enforcement actions by Irish authorities against British vessels.
Data provided to SeafoodSource by the Sea Fisheries Protection Authority (SFPA), a state agency that monitors all vessels operating within the Irish exclusive economic zone with the support of the Irish Naval
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Ireland is taking a harder line on E.U. vessels entering its waters, with the Irish navy recently detaining a Spanish trawler, the Pesorsa Dos, for fishing offenses in Irish waters, including leaving nets in the water longer than the time permitted under E.U. rules.
After the deal on Brexit, which according to Irish fishing groups resulted in Ireland ceding 40 percent of its E.U. fishing quota to the U.K., there are signs that Ireland is taking
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Guolian Aquatic is expecting a return to big profitability in its initial earnings projections for 2022.
The Guangdong, China-based seafood firm said it is expecting to bank a profit of CNY 27 million to CNY 40 million (USD 4.1 million to USD 6 million, EUR 3.8 million to EUR 5.6 million) for 2022 once its accounting is finalized. The result provides justification for the company’s exit from the aquaculture business and its shift to a
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Chloe Cheung, a former banker and now a senior advisor on sustainable finance at WWF Hong Kong, is seeking government support for a new multitrophic aquaculture project, following a recently completed feasibility study showing the potential of farming of multiple species together.
Cheung and WWF have asked for the support of Hong Kong’s government in helping it pay the HKD 2 million (USD 1.08 million, EUR 1.17 million) required to
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A mussel farmer since 1983, Michael Mulloy is the owner of Blackshell Farm, which grows rope-grown mussels in Ireland’s Clew Bay. He also serves as the national aquaculture chair at the Irish Farmers Association, a lobbying group focused on promoting and protecting the country’s dairy, meat, and farmed seafood producers.
Ireland’s exports of farmed seafood totaled EUR 150 million (USD 163 million) in 2022, most of it from
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There are signs seafood demand is picking up in China after the country abandoned its zero-Covid policy in November 2022 and eliminated its checks and disinfection routines for seafood imports at its ports. But uncertainty abounds as to what the rapid spread of the virus in China will mean for domestic consumption and for the operation of seafood-processing facilities.
Seafood trader Pablo Resnik, head of business development at Spanish shrimp
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François Mosnier, head of the oceans program at nonprofit financial think tank Planet Finance, spoke to SeafoodSource about his organization’s new Seafood Database, which identifies the companies most exposed to overfishing, illegal fishing, and other sustainability risks across the USD 1.8 trillion (EUR 1.65 trillion) seafood supply chain. The database monitors 100 firms.
SeafoodSource: Have you talked to the companies on the list?
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