Decline in a time of growth
Fishing represents 0.1% of the British economy and yet it dominates Brexit negotiations. Mainly for emotional reasons to do with the UK as an island state surrounded by fish; normally spouted by people who would never think of working on a trawler, or letting their children go to sea.
But there is also an economic argument, that the decline in the fishing industry can be reversed once we are free of the Common Fisheries Policy and that if it were not for the EU fishing would be a much larger percentage of our economy. One study claimed it could grow to 3.5%, which is pie in the sky fantasy stuff but does illustrate, in a strange way, the problems with the 0.1% figure.
As a percentage of GDP fishing and agriculture have been shrinking in size for decades, but farms and fishing boats are getting more efficient all the time. Much of the shrinkage is therefore not because the industries are getting smaller but because they are growing less quickly than other sectors; so their percentage shrinks. In 1990 agriculture including fishing and forestry was 1.4% of UK GDP, now it it under 0.7%, but that doesn’t mean half of all farms have disappeared, 50% of the fishing fleet has been sunk and half of the forests destroyed.
It is just that in the same time we have seen huge increases in other sectors, computer gaming, mobile phones and a dozen other rapidly growing industries increase the overall size of the economy, making slower growing sectors relatively smaller. But relative decline is not necessarily decline.
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