Blog

Moderators: Kathleen Hartman and Megan Sorby

Despite decades of public investment, groundbreaking research, and well-intentioned policy, U.S. aquaculture production has remained largely flat. The question is no longer what do we know?—it’s why isn’t it scaling? This roundtable brings commercial producers, feed and equipment manufacturers, seafood processors, distributors, lenders, and buyers to the center of the conversation to define what the private sector actually needs to grow production. The first half of the session will focus on identifying critical gaps in research, infrastructure, and commercialization support—directly informing academic research priorities, NGO initiatives, and future grant and funding programs.The second half will tackle the harder question: how do we convert decades of public investment into measurable increases in seafood production? Led by private-sector voices, this discussion will examine historical U.S. agricultural programs that successfully catalyzed commercial growth, alongside international aquaculture models where government policy and financing have accelerated industry scale. We will explore which tools—financing mechanisms, risk-sharing programs, procurement strategies, permitting reform, and infrastructure investment—could realistically work in the U.S. context.This session is designed for industry leaders who build, finance, grow, process, and sell seafood—and for the policymakers, researchers, and funders who want their work to translate into real production, real jobs, and real seafood on the plate.