“ At its core, salmon farming is about the production of high quality food ”

A Fresh Start
The Renewed Strategic Framework for Scottish Aquaculture, May 2009

Scottish Salmon Farming

... from humble beginnings to a major Scottish industry

From its Victorian tradition of cultivating salmon eggs and juvenile fish for restocking and enhancing rivers, Scottish ingenuity developed in the early 1970s to discover how to rear Atlantic salmon to maturity.  From these early achievements, the salmon industry has strived to produce high quality food, available to everyone, while respecting the environment on which it depends and working with its neighbours so that everyone can benefit from Scotland's natural resources.  Production has increased from 14 tonnes in 1971 to 154,164 tonnes in 2010.

Last year, we celebrated the 40^th anniversary of the first commercial salmon production sites to be established in Scotland. 

In those early, pioneering days, there were conflicting points of view – some hailed the industry as the “replacement for the oil bonanza”, whilst others questioned the credibility of the technology involved. We now have a partial answer. We may not have matched the oil industry’s revenue, but we have stood the test of time, growing sustainably over 40 years to become Scotland’s leading food export.  Research and development have kept pace with production, allowing salmon farmers to improve standards of fish welfare, while still taking account of the need to preserve the unique Scottish environment which is vital to the health and quality of the fish growing within it.

Scotland is now the largest farmed salmon producing country in the EU, which is only 40% self-sufficient in supply of seafood.