Dried Fish Matters
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Thanks to all who presented or participated in the Small Fish Seminar!
In line with 2025 global nutrition targets The Global Nutrition Report 2020 calls on societal parties to “to step up efforts to address malnutrition in all its forms and tackle injustices in food and health systems” (2020:8). It points out that progress towards this end is slow as well as highly unfair, with developing countries bearing the brunt of the problem. Fish is noted as one of the most nutrient-dense foods, for which more public investment is required (ibid.:94). Small fish, particularly when consumed whole, are very rich in micronutrients and aid in the absorption of nutrients from plant-based foods with which they are eaten. Small fish are still a relatively ‘cheap’ food in most countries of the world when compared to other animal-sourced foods, and can be purchased in small quantities, making them more accessible to the poor (ibid.:85). The event is a follow-up on the theme of World Food Day 2020, ‘Grow, Nourish, Sustain. Together.’
Small fish, particularly when consumed whole, are very rich in micronutrients and aid in the absorption of nutrients from plant-based foods with which they are eaten.
Global Nutrition Report 2020
This 3-stage event focuses on the contribution of the class of what are commonly known as ‘small fish’ (mainly epipelagic forage fish) to the food and nutrition security of poor and undernourished populations of the developing world. Small fish species are numerous in oceans and freshwater environments, and often make up the less expensive varieties of products in aquatic food marketplaces. They frequently end up on the plates of low-income households.
We take a food system approach to examine the role of the various segments of the small fish value chain in meeting the four dimensions of food and nutrition security – availability, accessibility, quality (utilization) and stability (FAO 2006). We recognize the direct nutritional contributions of small fish, but also the indirect contributions, through employment, that participation in small fish value chains provide. While our ambition is global in scope, the evidence presented derives from a more limited set of country settings in South and Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Four ongoing international research projects on the role of small fish in providing food and nutrition security provide empirical inputs and analyses, as do a set of relevant FAO-led efforts.
Thanks to everyone who joined us on February 15 & 16!
The Dried Fish Matters partnership brings together experts on fisheries, food security, and livelihoods to generate the first detailed study of the dried fish economy in South and Southeast Asia.
This transdisciplinary effort will identify the overall contribution of dried fish to the food and nutrition security and livelihoods of the poor, and examine how production, exchange and consumption of dried fish may be improved to enhance the well-being of marginalized groups and actors.
The Fish for Food project aims to understand how low-price fish chains contribute to urban food security in India and Ghana and to identify policy and business interventions that have potential to improve them.
City regions in LMIC are expanding and so are the food security problems of their poorer inhabitants. The nutritional properties of seafood make it vital to the health and food security of millions of poor urban consumers. This project studies the food systems that service low-income consumers in selected city regions of South Asia (India) and West Africa (Ghana), with the aim of improving their quality and scope. These food systems – in which women entrepreneurs often play an important role – derive produce from small-scale as well as industrial (distant water) fisheries, which possess various degrees of environmental sustainability. The project gathers relevant fisheries and food security expertise, pilots new business approaches and investigates their relevant policy environments. The governance lessons gained from the two regions are generalized and fed into the international debate on fish-related food security.
‘Although poorer consumers can still get their hands on small fish, that may not be the case for much longer’, warns maritime geographer Maarten Bavinck
Small Fish and Food Security: Towards innovative integration of fish in African food systems to improve nutrition
The SmallFishFood consortium aims to shift small fish – including sardines and small indigenous species (SIS) – to the forefront of the global food security agenda.
SmallFishFood aims for transformation to ecological sustainability and food security by asking: How can socio-cultural, economic and institutional transformations of the fish value chain, as well as technical and infrastructural innovations, contribute to improved, sustainable utilization of small fish resources for Africa’s low-income population?
Innovative Knowledge About Networks – Fish for Food
Small, low priced, fish – either dried, fresh or conserved – are vital for the nutritional security of poor people in rural areas in Indonesia and are an important source of livelihood for millions of coastal fishing families and – often female – processors and traders. Due to climatological changes and market challenges (i.e. increased catch fluctuations and processing of small fish for fish meal) the supply of affordable small fish is under threat. Meanwhile, changing diets and food programs affect the demand for small fish. Considering these fluctuations in supply and demand, IKAN–F3 aims to study the food system that services low-income consumers in three selected rural regions in Indonesia with the aim of improving their quality, resilience and scope. It builds on ongoing research on this topic in various parts of the world, and aims to develop innovative insights and lessons relevant to Indonesia.
The government of Odisha State, India has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with WorldFish for a pilot program that will include dried fish in a supplementary nutrition program for children, pregnant and nursing women, and adolescent girls.
The MOU also indicates a commitment to provide training to 10 Women Self Help Groups (WSHGs) on hygienic fish processing and marketing, including solar drying of small indigenous species of fish from wild catch.
Please follow the link below to download a copy of our most recent newsletter. This edition includes information on the following topics:
Derek Johnson, Shakuntala Thilsted, Ben Belton
The Covid-19 pandemic illustrates powerfully and directly the degree to which globalization has created a world of interconnection. We are all struggling with the effects of the virus, but how well we are buffered in our struggles against those impacts varies dramatically by social and geographical position. The crisis is pulling back the veil on vulnerabilities in our economic mode of production while also reawakening discussions of the power of the state in moments of crisis. In many cases, we are seeing the mobilization of state apparatus to protect public health and to fend off immiseration.
The crisis has underscored how economic arrangements have a core function of sustaining populations. Essential services include those which give life. Health care of course is the most visible of these services, but the logistics of provisioning people with food is equally critical.
It is here, of course, where fisheries count. Fisheries are major players in international trade and thus the high circuits of capitalism, but fisheries are also key to food and nutrition security and population health. Fish is healthy food par excellence; on a per gram basis small fish in particular pack a greater nutritional punch than just about any other food.
The challenge with fish is perishability, hence the capital intensive cold chains that support the distribution of fish around the world.
Humans, however, have since ancient times used much simpler drying, fermenting, salting, and smoking techniques to address the perishability problem. Preservation in this way allows for the storage and long-distance trading of fish. These venerable low-cost techniques have the big advantage of permitting access to highly nutritious fish for poor and remote populations. Even very small portions of dried fish used as a condiment can have an enormous impact on dietary diversity and nutritional security.
In the Covid-19 moment, dried fish point us to overlooked chains of economic interconnection. These chains are of enormous nutritional importance that should be a central part of directed responses to the crisis. Supporting dried fish economies provides the double benefit of underpinning nutrition security while also sustaining the livelihoods of the millions of small-scale economic actors who participate in dried fish value chains. This is a moment to support and improve small-scale and informal dried fish market chains, not to shut them down as has occurred in some instances.
Dried fish are portable, storable, and affordable. They are a crucial source of nutritional security for the poor.
Programmatically, in this time of cascading health and economic crises, the Global South needs food sources that do not require expensive food chains for their provisioning. Dried fish meets this need.
Governments and civil society actors should designate the dried fish sector as an essential industry and provide it, and the fisheries and value chain actors that sustain it, policy and financial protections and supports to allow it to fulfil its critical provisioning role. Such support should recognize not only the nutritional function of dried fish, but also the many actors whose work sustains dried fish value chains. This is an opportunity to improve dried fish product quality and conditions of work of those who labour in the sector.
Specific recommendations:
INGOs, bilateral donors, and Global North Civil Society organizations should recognize the critical life-sustaining role of dried fish (along with other essential agricultural sectors) in the provisioning of populations of the Global South in a time when there is a growing risk of widespread hunger due to the disruption of food producing systems. Funds, logistical support, and expertise need to be marshalled by these actors to assist governments and partners in the Global South to underwrite the continued operation of the dried fish sector and its contributions to the nutritional and employment needs of poor populations.
This post was previously published at https://fish.cgiar.org/news-and-updates/news/dried-fish-covid-19-world
The Dakshin Foundation and the Dried Fish Matters (DFM) project jointly conducted a pilot study on the dried fish sector at Malvan, Maharashtra, to assess the structure, supply chain and trends of the dried fish economy, and its possible links with the fishmeal industry. Fish caught in Malvan has significantly declined in the past decade, reducing the dried fish trade as well. Dried fish trade is possibly further diminished by the development of the fishmeal industry. The study found that fish for drying may be increasingly diverted to fishmeal, as the letter is less labour-intensive and generates steady profits. The future of fish drying, therefore, appears to be under threat, primarily due to a low and unsteady supply of fish and potentially due to industries like fishmeal as well.
Research in India has been extended to four new states. Dr. Amalendu Jyothishi, Dr. Priya Gupta, and Dr. Ramachandran Bhatta will lead scoping research in Karnataka. Mr. Ramachandrudu Barigela will lead a scoping research team in Mizoram and Manipur. Ms. Trisha Gupta, Mr. Ishaan Khot, and Dr. Naveen Namboothri of the Dakshin Foundation will lead scoping research in Maharashtra.
Dr. Holly Hapke and Dr. Nikita Gopal (CIFT Kochi) conducted a pre-scoping visit to Kochi in February and are preparing for engagement in a full return scoping research period in collaboration with several other members of DFM later this year.
The Cambodia scoping research concluded with a stakeholder workshop attended by more than fifty participants, including numerous dried fish processors. Gayathri Lokuge presented a preliminary summary of findings from the research at the workshop as the launching point for discussion of concerns and pathways forward by the participants. Gayathri is incorporating key points from the workshop into her analysis.
Read the full report of the Phnom Penh workshop here.
Gayathri’s final scoping report will be available soon and will serve as a useful point of reference for the other DFM teams that are now in the midst of their scoping research.