Author: DFM-Admin

Categories
Research

A social-ecological systems perspective on dried fish value chains

Sisir Pradhan, Prateep Nayak, and Derek Armitage advocate a conceptual departure from a neoclassical economic orientation of dried fish value chains to an emphasis on linked social-ecological systems (SES) perspective, defined as an integrated, coupled, interdependent and co-evolutionary system with mutual vertical and horizontal feedbacks between ecological and social subsystems (Berkes et al., 2003).

You can download their Open Access article here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666049022000068.

Key messages

  • The conventional dried fish value chain follows a narrow neoclassical economic perspective.
  • It fails to factor in non-capital relations of dried fish shaped by specific histories, ecologies, people, and practices.
  • SES-oriented dried fish value chain (SESVC) reconceptualizes the dried fish value chain by considering fisheries resource system as a critical new node.
  • SESVC puts Primacy on integration of human and environmental dimensions and social well-being of upstream value chain actors.

Conceptualization of SESVC

Conceptual framework of SES oriented dried fish value chain

The figure above (fig. 5 in the published article) provides an initial hybrid and interdisciplinary conceptual framing of a SES-oriented dried fish value chain (SESVC). The framework includes several novel ideas in terms of its main components and cross-scale interactions. 

First, the framework introduces the resource base or the fisheries ecosystem as a central and/or novel node in the dried fish value chain. This positioning comes at the cost of excluding the fish and the fishers. The principle that ‘if there is no fish (and its habitat) there is no dried fish’ will become a reality if we continue to exclude the resource and ecosystem node from the value chain . The resource node is fundamentally dynamic and that determines the price, product, livelihoods of resource dependent communities and the regulating framework which are critical to the functioning of the value chain. 

Second, the SES value chain perspective places the producing and processing, trading, retailing, and consumer nodes from the conventional value chain along with the new resource and ecosystem node in a two-way feedback relationship. Doing so clarifies that these nodes are bound by multiple interactions across several scales and levels of the entire value chain – that they are in fact ‘co-produced’.

Third, the framework reflects a social-ecological system view of the dried fish value chain by organizing nonlinear feedback, dynamic linkages, uncertainties, and emergence as key attributes that guide the node level interactions. 

Fourth, the three segments – structure, conduct and performance – of the value chain remain integral to its core and an active part of the interactive process involving the SES attributes and the five nodes

Abstract

Small-scale fisheries (SSF) support over 90% of the 120 million people engaged in fisheries globally. Dried fish is an important sub-sector of SSF, which is characterized by declining social, economic, political conditions of people involved in its production, and the ecosystems they depend on. Dried fish accounts for 12% of the total fish consumption globally but can increase up to 36% in low-income countries. About half of the people involved in dried fish production and marketing are women. The approach taken to analyse dried fish sector has so far followed a narrow subset of commodity chain approaches with a focus on financial value, transmitted in a linear ‘vertical’ fashion across value chain actors. Existing value chain approach fails to factor the non-capital relationships of dried fish that are contingent upon specific histories, ecologies, peoples, places, and the practices. The narrow neoclassical economic perspective of dried fish value chain (DFVC) also impedes appropriate responses to their unique attributes pertaining to social, ecological, institutional interactions across multiple scales. Failure to consider social-ecological system (SES) attributes, its connections and relationships with dried fish value chain not only undermine social wellbeing of upstream actors but also perpetuates social-environmental inequity and injustice. The paper offers a novel SES-oriented DFVC perspective that focuses on social wellbeing of fishers and dried fish workers. The reconceptualisation of structure, conduct and performance of DFVC is done by conducting an interdisciplinary analysis of peer-reviewed literature from SES, value chain and social wellbeing.

Citation

Pradhan, Sisir Kanta, Prateep Kumar Nayak, and Derek Armitage. 2022. “A Social-Ecological Systems Perspective on Dried Fish Value Chains.” Current Research in Environmental Sustainability 4 (January): 100128. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crsust.2022.100128.

Categories
Meetings and workshops

DFM webinar with Amrita Sen

Amrita Sen, member of the DFM West Bengal team, joined us to introduce her new book “A Political Ecology of Forest Conservation in India: Communities, Wildlife and the State” (Routledge, 2021).

Amrita discussed her ongoing research on the political ecological context of the Sundarbans, which has helped orient recent fieldwork within the Dried Fish Matters project. Her talk introduced the diverse economies of the Sundarbans – including forest fishing, honey collection, and prawn farming – and illustrated the inadequacies of attempts to govern the complex socio-political and inter-species realities of this region. Discussion after the talk focused on the complexity of the political ecological landscape of the Sundarbans, and in particular on the issue of defining rights for resource users who are positioned as “non-native”.

You can watch the webinar on our YouTube channel now.

Watch live on YouTube

About Amrita

Amrita Sen is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and a Visiting Faculty with Azim Premji University. Her research interests include cultural and political ecology, politics of forest conservation, urban environmental conflicts and Anthropocene studies. In 2019, Amrita received the “Excellence in PhD Thesis award” from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, for her doctoral research on the conservation politics in Sundarbans.

Amrita Sen webinar posterDownload

Categories
Uncategorized

Blue Justice for small-scale fisheries

What does Blue Justice for Small-Scale Fisheries look like?

Launched in celebration of World Fisheries Day 2021, our partner TBTI Global is hosting a virtual tour that showcases the realities of small-scale fisheries from around the world.

The 19 short video case studies collected by TBTI highlight the urgency of creating a more equitable and just space for small-scale fisheries.

Dried Fish Matters is proud to be part of this initiative.

Three of our research teams – DFM West Bengal, DFYWA (Andhra Pradesh), and DFM Bangladesh – contributed images and videos from their fieldwork on dried fish value chains. These videos offer vivid documentation of dried fish processors and traders’ livelihoods, illustrating governance challenges related to social justice issues such as income insecurity, child labour, contested land tenure, and environmental change.

Dried Fish Processing in the Indian Sundarbans


Credits: Aishik Bandyopadhyay, Raktima Ghosh, Jenia Mukherjee, Amrita Sen, Anuradha Choudry, Shreyashi Bhattacharya, Swarnadeep Bhattacharjee and Souradip Pathak

The combined riparian and coastal topography of West Bengal hosts a great many varieties of fish that builds the dietary habit of her people. Fish is not only consumed in its raw, unprocessed form, but it is equally popular in its salted and unsalted dried version, enriched in nutritive elements. Traditional fish drying process involves many people who participate in different phases of the operation along the coastlines of Bengal in order to eke out their living. Apart from the market-driven value, dried fish, associates a deep sociocultural, ecological and sustenance relations with the local people of Indian Sundarbans, a part of the world’s largest delta carved by the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna river systems in combined India and Bangladesh. This video presents the story of dried fish and those who have long engaged themselves in fish drying practices at Frasergunj village of Indian Sundarbans, West Bengal.

Living on the edge: Small-scale women fish processors of northern coastal Andhra Pradesh, India

Credits: District Fishermen’s Youth Welfare Association (DFYWA)

On the Northeastern coast of Andhra Pradesh, women who process and trade in dried fish have experienced increasing hardships. With the concentration of fish trade at major harbours, women must take long journeys to do business at sites that provide no water source for drinking or washing, no toilets, and no place to rest. In the villages, urbanization and development have reduced available beach drying areas, either through direct encroachment or through erosion caused by altered landscapes. Due to the lack of secure land tenure, women are unable to invest in the maintenance or construction of fish drying infrastructure.

Child Labour in Dried Fish Processing in Bangladesh

Credits: Dried Fish Matter Bangladesh team

The use of child labour in fish processing is extremely common, in both inland and marine drying sites in Bangladesh. It is customary for children to support their parents by providing assistance in family-run drying operations, but paid work is also very common. Extremely young children may be observed conducting such work. This video presents visual documentation of child labourers at fish drying yards in Bangladesh, including Rohingya refugees and internal migrants displaced by natural disasters.

Categories
Meetings and workshops

DFM at IMBeR

Session 3 at the IMBeR West Pacific Symposium on “Dried Small Fish: Ecology, Value Chains, and Nutrition“, hosted by DFM, was held on November 25, 11:00-14:00 UTC.

Download Program
REGISTER (free!)

About the IMBeR Symposium

The China-Japan-Korea (CJK) IMBeR Symposium on marine ecosystem has been held eight times over the period from 2002 to 2018 to review the achievements and to set the future directions of international ecosystem research in the western North Pacific as a part of the past GLOBEC and the IMBeR regional activities. Responding to the growing needs, the CJK IMBeR community changed its name to the West Pacific Symposium to better assume for the entire West Pacific Ocean, as outlined in the IMBeR Science Plan and Implementation Strategy 2016-2025. This kick-off symposium centers around the marine biosphere and its biogeochemistry in the West Pacific Ocean from the Subarctic in the North to the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean and its connectivity with the Arctic, Southern Ocean, and the Indian Ocean to deepen a holistic hemispheric view. All marine habitats including coastal areas (estuaries, saltmarshes, coral reefs, etc.), continental shelf to the deep ocean and their seafloors are of interests. Participants in the IMBeR Regional Programmes, Working Groups, Endorsed Projects, and others are welcome to the symposium.

About this session

Dried, salted, fermented, pickled small fish, and derivative products are an important and ancient category of processed aquatic foods. They supply a concentrated source of micro-nutrients to diets of large populations in Asia, provide livelihoods to millions of small-scale fishers, processors and traders, and are a culturally significant component of Asian cuisines. The availability of small pelagic fish, such as anchovy and sardine, to producers, traders and consumers is linked with the ecology of these species. The patterns of movement of these fish species in the West Pacific and Indian oceans are increasingly shaped by human impacts (stressors) on the ocean, such as climate change. This session seeks to engage in a multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary dialogue on the links among ecology, value chains and nutrition related to small fish, used for drying and other forms of processing, in rapidly changing environmental and economic contexts. Expressions of interest are invited from natural scientists working on ecology and nutrition of small fish (e.g. anchovy, sardine) in the West Pacific and Indian oceans, as well as social scientists working on dried/processed small fish value chains in East, Southeast and South Asia. Abstract selection will be guided by the openness to present within multi-disciplinary, sub-regional groups.

Keynote Speaker: Shakuntala Thilsted

Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted, WorldFish Center, Malaysia

Keynote title: Aquatic Foods for Nourishing the West Pacific

Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted is the Global Lead for Nutrition and Public Health at WorldFish, a One CGIAR entity. She was awarded the 2021 World Food Prize for her ground-breaking research, critical insights, and landmark innovations in developing holistic, nutrition-sensitive approaches to aquatic food systems, including aquaculture and capture fisheries. She was awarded the 2021 Arrell Global Food Innovation Award for research innovation. She played a key role in the development of the WorldFish 2030 research and innovation strategy: Aquatic Foods for Healthy People and Planet. She is a member of the Steering Committee of the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) of the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS) and Vice Chair of the UN Food Systems Summit 2021: Action Track 4 – Advance Equitable Livelihoods, and also a Food Systems Champion. She plays a pivotal role in promoting aquatic food systems for nourishing nations and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Shakuntala holds a PhD from the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University (presently: Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen), Denmark. She also holds an Honorary Doctorate from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

Co-moderators

Nireka Weeratunge, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Sri Lanka

Nireka Weeratunge is a Research Fellow at the International Centre of Ethnic Studies (ICES) in Colombo, Sri Lanka and a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of Integrated Marine Biosphere Research (IMBeR). She collaborates on the research project ‘Dried Fish Matters: Mapping the Social Economy of Dried Fish in South and Southeast Asia for Enhanced Wellbeing and Nutrition’ with the University of Manitoba, Canada and University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka, supporting gender analysis and qualitative methods. She is also the qualitative lead of the ‘Social-ecological Dynamics in Rapid Economic Development: Infrastructure and Coastal Change in Southeastern Sri Lanka’ (SEDRIC) project at ICES, led by the French Institute of Pondicherry, India. She has a PhD in anthropology from the University of Toronto, Canada with over 25 years of research and practice in the interface of gender, environment and development issues in the Asia-Pacific region. Her main areas of work are the social and cultural aspects of natural resource use, focusing on livelihood strategies in relation to poverty, vulnerability, resilience and wellbeing in fishing and farming communities. She has worked in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China (Yunan), Laos, Myanmar, Solomon Islands, Philippines and Vietnam.

Derek Johnson, University of Manitoba, Canada

Derek Johnson is Professor of socio-cultural anthropology at the University of Manitoba and Head of the Department of Anthropology. He draws particularly on environmental and economic anthropology, political ecology, and social wellbeing in his research on small-scale fisheries in Asia and Canada. Dr. Johnson leads the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded International Partnership Dried Fish Matters (www.driedfishmatters.org). Dried Fish Matters is conducting research on the social economy of dried fish in six focus countries in South and Southeast Asia.

Download Program
REGISTER (free!)
Categories
Uncategorized

A Partnership in Numbers

We have reached the midpoint of our 7-year SSHRC Partnership Grant. In completing our midterm reporting exercise, we compiled some numbers about the project that are shared in the infographic below. We’re very proud of the 100+ students, collaborators, and co-investigators in our partnership, who have worked hard over the past three years to develop research on the economic, cultural, and nutritional importance of dried fish.

Despite the difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the DFM project has succeeded in fostering collaboration across more than 30 partner organizations. Our teams have worked together to produce, for example, a series of audiovisual documents exploring the cultural and sensorial dimensions of dried fish and have presented at virtual events including the World Ocean Week Small-Scale Fisheries Open House and the MARE “People and the Sea” Conference in 2021. Work toward a collectively authored e-book and digital humanities exhibition is currently underway.

Our primary research has produced several important findings that will guide our work in the second stage of the project. We have learned, for example, that:

  • Dried fish production is expanding in Sri Lanka, but corresponding investments are not being made to supply chain management or value addition.
  • The fishmeal industry in Karnataka is diverting fish away from human consumption, presenting a threat to food and nutrition security.
  • Dried fish from the Bay of Bengal is highly contaminated with microplastics.
  • Intergenerational transmission of female involvement in dried fish processing in Andhra Pradesh appears to have broken down.

We have also discovered evidence of the deep cultural value associated with dried, smoked, and fermented fish around the world. Our exhaustive review of the global literature on dried fish confirms that many of the challenges identified by DFM partners – notably concerning social relations, cultural value, and food and nutrition security – are severely underrepresented in both academic and applied research.

Many thanks to all our collaborators, wishing you the greatest fortune in your work in the second half of our project!

DFM Infographic: Partnership in numbers

Categories
News

Dried fish biscuits and energy bars for Bangladesh

Sesame + glass fish snacks from Bangladesh, developed by BAU researchers.

Two research teams in Bangladesh, from Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU) and Sher-E-Bangla Agricultural University (SAU), have separately developed Chanacur (popular snacks), Biscuits and energy bars from dried fish.

The BAU team use kechki fish (Corica Soborna), a small indigenous fish with high nutrient content, to make Chanacur and Bars, whereas the SAU team uses Panga and Siver Carp fish to make Biscuits and Bars.

Both teams claim that these new products are highly nutritious and will contribute to food and nutrition security of Bangladesh.

DFM PhD candidate Mahfuzar Rahman, currently in the field in Bangladesh, has shared with us some links to media reports on these initiatives. We look forward to learning more about these snacks and how they are being received by consumers.

Reports on the BAU team research

BBC News, September 26, 2021. “The way researchers have made nutritious chanachur and other delicacies with glass fish“.

BD-Daily, September 26, 2021. “Bakrbi made a crunchy almond and sesame bar with glass fish“.

Prothom Alo, October 12, 2021. “Bangladeshi researchers made Chanachur with fish“.

The Daily Jugantor, September 26, 2021. “Why is Chanachur made with glass fish nutritious?”

Reports on the SAU team research

Daily Sun, December 14, 2019. “Biscuit, Chanachur from fish to help Bangladesh fight malnutrition“.

United News of Bangladesh (UNB), December 14, 2019. “Biscuit, Chanachur from fish to help Bangladesh fight malnutrition“.

Bangladesh Post, December 8, 2019. “SAU researchers develop biscuit, chanachur from fish“.

Categories
Research

Gender relations in dried fish value chains

Galappaththi et al. explore gender relations in dried fish value chains, proposing an analytic framework that links gender, wellbeing creation, and intersecting structural oppressions within dried fish value chains, with an overarching focus on relationality.

Their work draws on three case studies: (1) The seasonal fish drying workforce at Nazirartek, Bangladesh, which includes local inhabitants, migratory workers from elsewhere in Bangladesh, and Rohingya refugees from neighbouring Myanmar; (2) local Tanzanian women and women from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who trade in dried Nile perch in Mwanza, Tanzania; and (3) Tamil fishing communities on Mannar Island, Sri Lanka, who engage in fish processing and selling, and whose traditional livelihoods have been impacted by civil war.

The authors suggest that by focusing our attention on gender relations in such contexts — the “relational construction of gendered roles, responsibilities and restrictions, and how they often uniquely disadvantage women” — we might better critique the power structures embedded in value chains, providing a better understanding of marginalization, agency, social wellbeing, and the complexities of women’s lived experience.

Selected constraints faced by women in dried fish value chains. Galappaththi et al. write: “Despite the diverse benefits mediated through social and cultural relations, women face significant constraints within dried fish value chains that perpetuate gender inequities and undermine their wellbeing. Existing dried fish scholarship, however, does not provide a complete account of these constraints. We supplement existing (limited) dried fish research with insights drawn from small-scale fisheries research to explore the key constraints faced by women”.

Reference

Galappaththi, Madu, Andrea M. Collins, Derek Armitage, and Prateep Kumar Nayak. 2021. “Linking Social Wellbeing and Intersectionality to Understand Gender Relations in Dried Fish Value Chains.” Maritime Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-021-00232-3.

The purpose of this perspective paper is to advance a comprehensive framework to integrate gender within the study of dried fish value chains. We do so by linking three complementary areas of scholarship: social wellbeing, intersectionality, and value chains. Social wellbeing literature emphasizes the range of benefits generated through dried fish value chains (e.g., social ties, cultural values, and material goods). An intersectional perspective, however, brings attention to the relational structures (e.g., caste, ethnicity) that intersect with gender to uniquely position women and men within value chains in relation to the benefits they can generate. In developing this framework, a key point of departure from existing literature is the notion of relationality (i.e., the creation of experiences in relation to one another within a given context). The value chain analysis further reveals how such unique positions determine the wellbeing outcomes women can generate through their participation in value chains. We demonstrate the contribution of this novel framework by applying it within dried fish case examples from Bangladesh, Tanzania, and Sri Lanka. In doing so, we systematically unpack how gender intersects with other structures of oppression and perpetuate gender inequity. Our framework thus results in a ‘thick description’ of gender relations operating in dried fish value chains. The insights that emerge can inform relevant policies, decision-making processes, and programs to ensure the creation of equitable wellbeing outcomes by those participating in dried fish value chains.

Categories
Research

Living on the edge

In India, dried fish have been traditionally important to small-scale fishing economies, contributed to food and nutritional security of large segments of population (especially the poor), and supported a wide range of livelihoods. Since the beginning of the 1990s, as Indian fisheries sector underwent a radical transformation, the dried fish processing sector was subject to significant upheavals. While the early stages of modernisation of Indian fisheries had enhanced the women’s access to fish, its latter stages were characterised by the dried fish value chains having to cope with reduced availability and access to fish; competition from other, more lucrative, value chains and markets; and overall decline in the drying operations. Women, who constituted the majority of actors in dried fish production and trade, faced increasing challenges to their livelihoods that required, on the one hand, having to make a number of adaptations to their fish processing and trade practices and, on the other, attempting to reduce their dependence on fish drying and switch to other occupations.

Many of these transformative changes remained poorly understood and documented, especially from a development policy perspective. District Fishermen Youth Welfare Association (DFYWA), an NGO working with the small-scale fishers on the east coast of India, undertook a study to obtain better understanding of the changing livelihood context of women dried fish processors, and its consequences on their quality of life, in the northern coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh. A major theme underlying the study has been to gain an historical perspective, based on the perspective of women involved in the dried fish trade, on the long-term viability of dried fish as a source of livelihoods, and in terms of their contribution to food security and small-scale fishing economies.

The focus of the study was firmly on women: to understand how a set of women, following a traditionally important way of life, coped with the impacts of major changes happening within and beyond their area of work, and frequently beyond their control or understanding. The adaptability, flexibility, and resilience shown by the women, it was expected, would not only form the basis of any policy/development actions to improve their conditions, but also have relevance to a wider range of people confronting similar trends and challenges in their own livelihoods in other activities/sectors.

Following a categorisation of the women fish processors (who were a diverse and disparate lot) according to their socio-economic conditions, the study attempted to understand the current status of dried fish production and the key trends affecting the activities and actors from a livelihoods perspective. It aimed to assess the current and long-term impacts of new sources of demand, such as industrial fishmeal, on the dried fish production and trade. It attempted to understand the strategies adopted by women (in terms of mitigation, adaptation, and diversification) to cope with the challenges and to assess the effectiveness and sustainability of such responses. Based on the magnitude of the challenges and women’s responses to them, the study tried to identify broad areas of action to inform and initiate future policy and support processes for more robust and realistic support systems to be put in place.

The study received partial support from the research project, ‘Dried Fish Matters: Mapping the social economy of dried fish in South and Southeast Asia for enhanced wellbeing and nutrition’, being implemented by the University of Manitoba, Canada, with support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Download

Reference

Salagrama, Venkatesh, and Arjili Dasu. 2021. “Living on the Edge: Perspectives of the Small-Scale Women Fish Processors of Northern Coastal Andhra Pradesh, India.” DFM Reports. India: District Fishermen Youth Welfare Association. [DFM-DFYWA_RPT_Living-on-the-edge_2021-08-25_FINAL.pdf]

The District Fishermen Youth Welfare Association (DFYWA) is a community-based non-governmental organisation working with the small-scale fishers and fishworkers of northern Andhra Pradesh since 1992, implementing activities focused on developing sustainable fisheries-based livelihoods for men and women. This working paper is the first in the proposed series, focusing upon the fisherwomen involved in dried fish trade covering the four northern coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh. The working paper also takes a sideways glance at the potential impacts of the industrial fishmeal production on the small-scale processed fish production in the target communities. It is the intention of DFYWA to treat the working paper as a live document, to allow updating it at regular intervals, add more quantitative data as it is collected, and also use this as a baseline to understand and interpret future development directions in the subsector, both from within the communities and outside of them. The study, based mostly on primary data collection, is undertaken by several members and staff of DFYWA.