Countries by Aquaculture Production 2024

What this chart shows. The fifteen countries that farmed the largest tonnage of aquatic life in 2024. The figures cover fish, crustaceans, molluscs and seaweeds raised in freshwater ponds, brackish lagoons and marine farms, and they are measured in live weight at the moment of harvest. World farmed output reached 141,607,034 tonnes that year.

How the data is collected. FAO sends annual questionnaires to national fishery offices, which carry primary responsibility for compiling the numbers; where a country does not report in time, FAO estimates its output so that world and regional totals stay complete. Of the 141.6 million tonnes farmed in 2024, 96.0 percent is flagged as an official national figure and 4.0 percent was imputed by FAO.

Background. FAO counts output as aquaculture when someone intervenes in rearing the stock, through regular stocking, feeding or protection from predators, and owns the animals or plants throughout that period. Organisms that anyone may take from a common-property resource, with or without a licence, are recorded as capture fisheries instead.

Limits. Seaweeds and other algae are included, so countries with large kelp or carrageenan industries rank higher here than they would on a fish-only measure. The entry for China covers the mainland only, because FAO publishes Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan Province of China separately. Whales, seals and crocodiles are reported in numbers rather than tonnes and are outside this total.