If you were going to eat fish at a restaurant or grill on the BBQ, one of the choices you might make is salmon. When you consider the good elements of the food and the other things with salmon, you can eat well and feel fit in your choice. Salmon are one of the meat-eating fish or it consumes smaller fish and there are multiple reasons why it is everyone’s favorite fish. The issue which comes up is salmon still good for you now that it is primarily sourced from farmed fish? A book called Salmon Wars by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins published by Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2022 would suggest otherwise.

For generations salmon was the fish that was born in a small stream, grew up and went to the ocean to come back to ensure the new generations are born on the small stream up river from the ocean. How it knew where to come back is a mystery, but it is does. The fact that it had to come up river meant millions of fish would come back and to be a fisherman meant fishing during spawning season was a good thing and would ensure no one went hungry, later in the year.

For every commodity, once it becomes popular the mystery behind it falls and someone will try to domesticate the commodity to what are known as industrial farms. If all the animals are healthy, then profits are to made in the industry and very good profits will be consistent.

The downside of industrialization of animals is the manure or waste of the animal. What happens to it and how is it treated. The first years of the industrial farm the land can absorb the wastes, by the third year there is saturation of wastes and the wrong bugs come in to harm the animals. In the case of salmon, it is lice. Then to battle the lice, new chemicals are used until the lice adapts, the new chemicals are not so good to humans.

To keep the salmon in the nets in the fish farms, the waste falls to the bottom and is not treated. At first it is dumped to the other side in the hopes the currents will wash it away, and in reality some will be, but much will not be and the food system begins to break down.

From the governments side, fish farms seem to be a good employment opportunity and there are some jobs created, but government subsidies for the jobs tend to be quite high. Rather than giving millions to companies, would it be better to give it to the people in the area and they will have higher standards of living? Politicians like cutting ribbons, so it is easier to give to companies.

In all industries, the use of technology and artificial intelligence to help produce and sell the commodity is being used. Perhaps technologies will make fish farming less harmful to the environment. Can the smaller scale examples be scaled up to meet the consumer demand?

Linking to dividend paying stocks, these companies make money to continually pay dividends and in the long term the stock appreciates over the years. Ideally as an investor you look to the long-term for how companies do their operations, the more sustainable, the better. There are downsides for industrialization of commodities, hopefully your dividends encourage the company to continually use technology to improve and lessen the downsides or by higher priced cuts of meat that are sustainable.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.