WOW panel transcript

This transcript is taken from the DFM panel discussion at the Small-Scale Fisheries Open House held during World Ocean Week in June 2021, facilitated by Ben Belton. The discussion follows a presentation of the video What Is the “Value” in Dried Fish Value Chains? [1], and features comments on value and governance in the dried fish sector from Tara Nair, Sisir Pradhan, Gayathri Lokuge, Mostafa Hossain, Anupama Adikari, and Shalika Wickrama. The text has been edited for clarity.

Transcript

BEN: Good evening everyone! I'd like to start off with a question for Tara, or actually two questions that are linked. First of all, what are some of the different types of value that are associated with dried fish in your study area in Gujarat? And then, do you find that different groups of people, with different backgrounds, value those dried fish in different ways?

TARA: Good afternoon everyone. Thanks so much for this opportunity. Gujarat is a very distinct context to study fisheries per se, and definitely dried fish. It's a supplier to many parts of India and outside India, but it's a very limited consumer of any kinds of fish products. According to official statistics, 75 percent of Gujarat's population has never eaten fish. So that's the context within which the industry is located. But it is a very industrialized state. So from that point of view, we were not able to see a lot of very deep, cultural associations within the social communities, but an important, alternative value is what I would call inclusive local development.

Considering the importance of dried fish processing, given its many parts and its focus on small fishers and small processors, inclusive local development I think is a very important value that we could really observe in the case of Gujarat. It's a very low-technology, low-fixed-cost kind of enterprise, so entry barriers are very low. That really adds to the inclusion possibility of dried sector women's participation, of course. I will never say that dried fish processing would bring in a lot of gender equity in the local areas, which is a much deeper sort of a problem. But it has definitely been able to incorporate a large number of women workers into the value chain, because fish drying is a very labor intensive activity and women are found to be extremely convenient to provide that kind of drudgerous work. But they they do participate in a lot of activities.

I think the fourth value would be the deep cultural interlinkages with other regions. For instance, interestingly, the person who really led us into the dry fish industry is a Keralite, somebody who belongs to Kerala but has a very deep financial business interest in the dry fish sector in Gujarat. So there is a very interesting cultural exchange possibility – quite a deep, long-standing historical one – that we were able to discover through this study. I consider that as another important value, apart from all the other values of well-being and such that we generally talk about.

As I mentioned, because Gujarat is not much of a fish-consuming or fish-liking state, we have not even been able to talk to very many people about what they associate with dry fish from a consumption point of view. People in the coastal communities never say "we are very fond of it", although they say that they do eat fish, including dried fish when they cannot get fresh fish. Otherwise the entire stock is exported to different parts, from Bombay to Bangladesh to the Northeast. And it goes, currently, in the form of fish feed to Vietnam. But that is another story.

BEN: Thank you, Tara. That's a really nice overview, and quite a unique situation in Gujarat, actually, compared to to some of the other sites in the project. I'd like to ask a similar question now to Sisir. We saw in West Bengal there's quite a different scenario, in terms of the cultural significance of dried fish for instance. Sisir, could you tell us about some of the different types of value that are associated with dried fish in your study area, and then how maybe different groups of people in that area may value dried fish in different ways?

SISIR: I'll mostly talk about the Eastern part of the Eastern Bay of Bengal. We look at dried fish as strongly culturally, socially, and economically embedded in the whole system of society. As you have seen in the video, it's a part of the cuisine, a delicacy, and people have many historical consumption relationships with dried fish. At the same time, when I worked in a village here, I saw that people looked at dried fish systems quite differently: they look at it as a form of coping.

The fishing patterns and timing for the small-scale fishers who do not go out deep sea fishing draw on ecological knowledge, which we call jutia and padilla in our local languages in West Bengal and Orissa. They follow the lunar cycle – for five days before and after the full moon, and similarly in other parts of the month. So they catch a lot of fish, and during that time they see that this gives an opportunity for them to really go for heavy processing, and then they can really survive on that. So they look at it as a coping system. Very interestingly, we had a cyclone on the West coast and the next week we had a cyclone on the East coast, then after the cyclone when I checked in the villages where I am working, and I saw people have nothing – they have rice and dried fish. So "look", people say, "we are only surviving because our agriculture is gone, nothing is available, one cannot go out and buy in a pandemic, and nothing is done!" So they're getting some rice from rations and they're eating with this dried fish. It's a ready-to-eat kind of food that can be stored for emergency use.

BEN: That was really interesting, to hear about the importance of dried fish as a survival food. I'd like to ask now a similar question to Gayathri, actually. Gayathri, you're currently in Sri Lanka but you were working doing research under DFM in Cambodia as well. So a similar question to you: how do you see the values of dried fish for different groups of people, and do you notice any differences between the South Asian context and the Southeast Asian context?

GAYATHRI: Thanks, Ben. I'll start with the last part of your question. Most of my work had been in in South Asia, in Sri Lanka primarily, so the when I first moved to Cambodia to carry out this research for the Dried Fish Matters project, the first kind of "shifting of lenses" that I had to do was to start recognizing freshwater fish as popular for people. I come from an island nation, and I grew up very close to the sea in Sri Lanka, so we are very socialized into consuming fresh fish that comes from the sea, as well as a dried fish that's linked to the sea. But when I went to Cambodia, I saw that the whole system – or most of the system – that's in place in terms of aquatic products for Cambodia, the symbolic value, the economic value, is actually attached to freshwater fish. This is sourced from the Tonle Sap Lake, as well as the Mekong and its tributaries. And there is also the fish that comes from the rice paddies. So I think that is one of the big changes that I noticed when I went, then of course living there I also had to adjust my consumption patterns. So that's one part of it. If I talk about the different kinds of values that Cambodians attach to dried fish – or what I actually call "processed fish" in Cambodia, because there are certain products that are actually not dried in Cambodia, such as fermented fish for example, which is processed and can be kept without refrigeration for a year, two years, three years – I think the diverse product range itself shows how important it is for the Cambodian cuisine.

If I can talk a little bit in detail about the fish sauce that is called prahoc in in Khmer, I think it's very similar to the example that Sisir explained of how important this processed product is to the diet of these people, especially during the lean periods of fishing. So in the dry seasons, when the fresh fish production is actually very low, people rely a lot on this. And very similar to this example, a lot of fish paste making happens actually at the peak of the the fish catch. There are these big nets, called Dai fishing, bagnets that operate on one part of the Mekong, Tonle Sap, and there is an abundance of fish catch. This is actually then processed into different varieties, but a lot of it actually, because this is small fish, is processed into fish paste. And this, with rice, becomes the main food, especially for the rural people in agricultural communities. There are also changing trends in terms of preferences for processed fish. I won't go into a lot of detail, but what we are starting to notice is that with some of the younger generations, their knowledge on producing or making processed fish-based dishes is actually decreasing. There seems to be also a trend, at least in the urban areas in Cambodia, that their food preferences are also changing.

BEN: Thank you, Gayathri, that's fascinating. I'd like to ask a follow-up question about Cambodia. The presentation that you gave really highlighted the diversity of different groups that are involved, in terms of gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, and religion. I wondered if you could comment a bit about how maybe some different groups of people experience or ascribe or gain value from from dried fish in different ways.

GAYATHRI: Sure. I could talk about scales, for example. At one level it was really difficult to differentiate between the people who catch fish, people who process fish, and people who actually market fish, because in certain cases they were all the same group of people. The same family would be doing all of these. This could be for their own consumption, but they were also marketing these products. So on the one hand, these are the people that actually live on the water bodies, especially in these floating villages on the Tonle Sap, but then when you go a little bit away from these main water bodies then I think the the consumption patterns change, because fresh fish was then becoming less available and therefore dried of processed fish was becoming more important in the diet. I think about 75 percent of the protein intake of Cambodians is actually from these aquatic products, fresh and processed. We could also observe, in terms of groups, when you go to the more coastal areas obviously there is a lot more production happening that uses marine products, but there was also a preference for prahoc for example, which is coming from the Tonle Sap. So you couldn't actually even differentiate and say that people who live on the coast actually like seafish and sea-based products – they still preferred some of the freshwater products as well. These are some of the differences. If I can briefly talk about the gender dimensions, most of the processing, at least at the household and small-scale production level, is actually managed and run by women. The slightly larger-scale processing units were then increasingly being managed by men, but a lot of the workers were still women. As Tara described, there were gender disparities in terms of wages and all that, but still we could see a very high presence of women of all ages, from very young girls to grandmothers, involved in this process.

BEN: I'd like to stick with that theme of freshwater versus marine, coastal versus inland, and move to Bangladesh. I'll ask Mostafa, can you tell us about the different types of value that people in Bangladesh associate with these freshwater and marine fish, and how they're valued differently in different parts of the country perhaps?

MOSTAFA: In Bangladesh the dried fish sector is really huge. I don't know how many million people are involved with the wider value chain, from catching fish, bringing it to the drying yard, and then processing, but it is huge. What we found in the main sector, in some of the landing centres, was that although we have some major species like Bombay duck, ribbonfish, and some anchovies, there are also some other ethnic products, such as dried oysters, that only ethnic tribal communities consume. Also we have one fermented product in the marine sector called nakti, which is only eaten by the ethnic tribal people. So regarding the value of dried fish, many people and their food nutrition and livelihoods depend on the marine dried fish and seafood sector. There are seasons in the year when people only have access to dried fish for their protein, and this is really cheap, making it affordable and accessible to them. When it comes to freshwater products, there are a few species that are really very important, like the barbs, the puti is very important all over the North and Northeastern part of the country, and hundreds and thousands of tonnes of those fish are dried. Also we have a fermented product, shidol, mainly made from puti. Initially it used to be made only from puti, but in the last last 15-20 years as the puti's diversity is under threat and both the demand and price are increasing, people have started to ferment marine anchovies, and this is a huge value chain. What we found is that not only the people in Bangladesh are eating those things, also there are I think several hundred thousand people in the overseas Bangladeshi diaspora who are very fond of both the dried and fermented products, so those are often going overseas, and they are market-oriented.

Actually where I was born and brought up, I didn't eat any dried fish in my boyhood. I didn't know anything about the dried fishing in that part of Bangladesh. But as i came to Mymensingh to study, and later I became involved with dried fish, I found that the sector is really, really huge, and involves very many people. We found with the people in Cox's Bazar, even though they have fresh fish, still they would like to eat the dried fish, actually. Sometimes when people travel they bring some gifts, and that must be dried fish or fermented fish. So these things are really huge. Having said that, this has been going on for, I don't know, hundreds of years, but still I found that the government policymakers are sort of oblivious to the sector. They just don't actually know or visualize how big the sector is, what the pros and cons of the sector are, or what the problems and prospects are. I feel that through this Dried Fish Matters project, given that it's a long project and hopefully with the way we are working – we the biologists are getting involved with anthropologists and sociologists – hopefully there will be much more and much clearer visualization of dried fish in Bangladesh.

BEN: Thank you very much, it's a really nice overview of the situation in Bangladesh. Following on the last part of your question there, I'd like to ask Anupama actually, how does dried fish figure in state policy and development activities in the area that you've been working in Sri Lanka, and what what actions do you think could help to support dried fish value chains to create more positive values?

ANUPAMA: In Sri Lanka actually there are not any national policies related to dried fish. But a number of policy oriented studies can be available under different categories, such as production market channels, market strategies, or nutrient and quality standard values. So actually we should extract the information from these studies and develop national policy for the dried fish industry.

BEN: Based on the based on the kind of research that you've been conducting so far, do you have some ideas about what what kind of policies might be effective to bring out the best of the values of the sector?

ANUPAMA: Actually, when we compare fishers' organizations to dried fish organizations, the dried fish organizations are not as strong. We can do something to increase and expand dried fish processing and trading organizations and increase their voices within fisheries sector, through policy improvements.

BEN: Shalika, is there anything that you've learned in your research so far with with DFM that's challenged your expectations about dried fish?

SHALIKA: Yes, actually there are a lot of challenges for dried fish processors and traders in Sri Lanka, related to technology, lab utilization, and market opportunities. There are no proper market opportunities. There are no proper lab utilization techniques. And there is no proper dried fish association in Sri Lanka. Also, there is no good connection between traders and processors, and there is no better quality raw material supply. Most of the dried fish production techniques or value addition techniques are comparatively low standard. I have to mention especially that there is no strong technology utilization or dried fish processor association in Sri Lanka. These things mainly affect the economic strength of the dried fish processors and other value chain actors in the dried fish industry in Sri Lanka. Those are the main challenges.

BEN: Thank you, Shalika. You are describing similar challenges to the ones that Anupama highlighted there, about the sort of lack of organization and the lack of voice for people in the dry fish sector. Maybe now we can have a just a wider question for the group that anyone can answer if they'd like. Have you identified any changes that are taking place in the way that dried fish is valued, in any of your study areas? How are the values associated with dried fish changing over time?

SISIR: I think dried fish is a very interesting sector now. If we look at the whole fisheries sector and its influence in dry fish, and the value associated to it by different stakeholders, although the small scale fishers associate values as they used to – because it is emanating from their historical and cultural perspective, identity issues – elsewhere in the value chain, other actors are looking at it very differently. Say in the East coast of West Bengal and Orissa, I see there is a lot of policy impetus on culture fisheries. And there are "place-based" fisheries – like "this place is like very good for shrimp cultivation". So the specific emphasis on species alters the whole management and kind of catch dynamics in the systems, and that is creating a lot of further changes in the sea space itself, in the relationship with the fishing systems. The issue is that now people are getting the same input for poultry feed for fish meal for many others. So the market structure is changing, and in that sense the whole dynamics within the fishing community are changing. Earlier, people used to dry fish for food. All the fishers come to dry for food. There is a psychological and social kind of attachment to this kind of activity. Now there are segments within that value chain, and now I see in my in the village I am working in, a new kind of a system is emerging where big actors having big nets, big boats are consolidating the production. Some are consolidating for fish feed, some are still going for particular food products. But the problem is that the market system is not that organized, so the people who are into sun drying and similar forms of production at times are losing out. So there's a major tension happening at the community level and there is change happening in the fish chain.

In terms of value, with the changes happening now in the kinds transportation, the kinds of competition within the space, and the kinds of auctioning systems and trade systems, fish are also getting exchanged more than before. Orissa is giving a lot of fish to Bangladesh in terms of shrimp, while we are getting lot more hilsa and those kinds of fish from Bangladesh. So there are a lot more changes happening in that space. There are also policy impetuses there. You are aware that WorldFish has worked in Orissa, we are now bringing nutrition and dried fish together into a midday meal and kind of social protection programs. And there new actors like SIGs are coming up. So we have the traditional fisher communities and their associations, and there are also government-promoted SIGs and those kind of networks coming in. Investment is coming in. There are changes happening in that, some of which are good, but there are also kind of muddy waters at that level. Now there is a space to look at all these issues and see how the traditional fishers and these kinds of institutional arrangements can work together for a for a better kind of economic and social value at the community level.

BEN: That's a really interesting pattern there, with the policy drive towards aquaculture sort of contributing to this competition for fish as food, and the changing dynamics associated with that.

TARA: In order to think about a policy solution, to understand the changing structure of the dried fish sector, we need to really look at the fisheries sector in general. A piecemeal sort of an approach would not do any good to dried fish as a sub-sector. We need to really reimagine how we look at fisheries development per se, as a currency in the world market, so that you can make more and more foreign exchange using newer technologies – whether it is aquaculture or mariculture or Blue Revolution or whatever it is. I think we are just looking at fisheries as just a currency which can enhance the national economy. I think that has to completely change, even to make the dried fish values different.

BEN: So really advocating for a sort of food systems approach to understanding fish as a whole, and where dried fish fits into that.

MOSTAFA: I just would like to point out one thing. In a recent study, we found microplastics in our dried fish – and it's not a very small amount, it's a large amount of microplastics present in all the dried fish we analyzed. This could be a new area of study, and I would like to ask the partner countries if they have any idea of the microplastic contamination in their products, and also other chemical contaminants if possible. Microplastics is a significant global problem. In both marine and freshwater fish there are microplastics. And these microplastics, when it comes to the dried product, actually become concentrated three to four times.

BEN: That's a an emerging trend, and quite a quite a worrying one, that we're starting to see. I'll just take a minute to to summarize if I can. I think this has been a really fascinating discussion. It just really underlines what an incredibly interesting subject this is. There are just so so many angles to explore. I think something that comes through really clearly from all of the the presentations is diversity, in terms of the the products produced, the geographies involved, the different groups of people, the different sets of values that are derived from dried fish. And then also, I think something that came through really nicely in one of the the first presentations from West Bengal is the need for really transdisciplinary research, such as DFM is helping to to bring together, to understand this diversity and make sense of it across scales and across multiple sites. I think we have heard evidence that we're moving slowly towards this goal, and hopefully by the end of the project we will have a a much more complete understanding of this this whole fascinating world.