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Fish Meal

Fish meal is a feed ingredient made by drying and grinding small fish and fish processing byproducts. This indicator measures the international market price of fish meal in dollars per metric ton, a key commodity price directly linked to global livestock and aquaculture production costs.

There are multiple reasons why fish meal is an important economic indicator. First, fish meal is used as a major livestock feed and aquaculture feed, making it essential to the global food production system. Large quantities of fish meal are consumed in poultry farms, pig farms, and salmon farms, so its price ultimately ripples through to prices of chicken eggs, pork, and farmed fish. Second, due to limited raw material supply and fluctuating demand, fish meal prices have relatively high volatility and serve as an indicator of market sentiment and supply shocks.

As a general trend, the fishing performance of major producing countries such as Peru and Chile, particularly catch volumes of small fish susceptible to the El Niño phenomenon in Peru, greatly influence prices. Additionally, increases in global livestock demand, especially the expansion of meat consumption in Asia, create buying pressure. In recent years, as attention turns to the transition to sustainable fishing and the development of alternative ingredients such as algae, long-term supply tends to be constrained, maintaining upward price pressure. For investors and agribusiness professionals, fish meal prices are an important monitoring indicator of food inflation and agricultural costs.