WOW panel transcript
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Revision as of 12:49, 24 September 2021 by EricThrift (talk | contribs) (Uploaded YouTube auto-transcript)
This transcript is taken from the DFM panel discussion at the June 2021 WOW Small-Scale Fisheries Open House, facilitated by Ben Belton. Source text is lightly edited from the YouTube automatic captions so contains some errors.
[BEN] so that was a fascinating and diverse set of videos to kick off the session there and i think a really nice introduction so we're now moving to the the panel segment and so i'd like to invite all of the panelists to turn on their their cameras if they would like to okay so good evening everyone i'd like to start off with a question for for tara actually two two questions that are linked so so 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 people different groups of people with different backgrounds value those dried fish in different ways
[TARA] good afternoon everyone thanks so much for this opportunity you know as i told you gujarat is a very very distinct you know different kind of a context to study fisheries per se and definitely write fish it's a supplier to you know many parts of india and outside india but it's a very sort of you know very limited consumer of all kinds of sort of official products i think 75 according to the official statistics 75 percent of gujarat's population has never eaten fish so that's the that's that's a context within which the industry is located but it is a very you know sort of dramatically industrialized you know state so i from that point of view you know i may not be really women we were not able to see a lot of very deep cultural sort of associations you know within the social communities but i thought an important you know sort of uh value an alternative value i would say is what i would call as inclusive local development if that can be seen as a as a value and the importance of you know dried fish processing for you know by its in in very pop very many parts its focus on small fishers and small processors inclusive local development i think is a very important value that you know we could really observe in the case of gujarat and it's a very low technology you know low fixed cost kind of an enterprise so entry barriers are very low so you know that really you know adds to the inclusion possibility of direct sectors women's participation of course i will never say that dried fish would bring in a lot of gender equity in the local areas but that's a much deeper sort of a problem but it has definitely been able to incorporate a large number of women workers into the 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 you know drudgeris so what a work but they they do participate in a lot of sort of activities and i think the fourth value i would say would be the the kind of you know deep cultural sort of interlinkages between you know with other regions for instance interestingly the the person who really led us into the dry fish industry is a keralite and somebody who belongs to kerala you know but very deep financial business interest in the dry fish sector in gujarat so which we would be observed everywhere so there is a there's a very interesting cultural exchange sort of a possibility quite a deep long-standing historical one we could discover through this study i think i considered that as another sort of you know another important value that you know apart from all the other values of well-being and you know all that we generally talk about and as i told you because you know gujarat is not a very consuming fish liking kind of a state you know we we have not even been able to talk to very many people about you know how do you associate dry fish with in terms of consumption from the consumption point of view of course the coastal communities are you know they they never say we are very fond of they said that they do eat fish you know dried fish when we do not get you know the the the what you call it the fresh fish otherwise the entire stock is exported to different parts including from bombay to bangladesh to the northeast and it really goes right now in the form of you know fish feed exercise goes up to vietnam and you know all kinds of women of course that's another country that we discovered so i i stop here i hope i have answered that question
[BEN] okay thank you Tara yes 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 so i'd like to ask a similar question now actually to sisir so we saw in west bengal there's quite a different scenario in terms of the sort of the cultural significance of dried fish for instance so 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] hello hello hello so because because the electricity the connection is literally unstable but uh thanks thanks ben i think west bengal and i'll mostly talk about the eastern part of eastern bay of bengal where is bengal and orissa here so we look at in in this it is strongly culturally socially as economically is embedded in the whole system in the society so as you have seen in the video it's a part of its cuisine delicacy and people have many historical kind of a consumption relationship with the dried fish at the same time people look at dried fish systems here when i woke in a village here i saw a liquid diet fish system quite differently they look at it as a coping because the fishing pattern and fishing type timing for the small scale fishers who do not go for a deep sea fishing their ecological knowledge kind of they call it jutia and padilla in our local languages in west bengal and orissa where they follow this lunar cycle for five days before this full moon day and after the full moon day and similarly the the the other part of the month so they catch a lot of fish and during that time they see that during that this gives an opportunity for them to really go for processing heavy processing and then they can really survive on that so they look at an equipping system so we had a very interestingly we had a cyclone in west coast and the next week we had a cyclone in the west east coast so after the cyclone when i checked it in the villages i am working 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 and buy in an epidemic and nothing is done so they're getting some rice from ration and they're we're eating with this dried fish so it's a ready to eat kind of food it can be stored and people look at it
[BEN] i i think maybe your connection has gone down this is here so maybe we'll we'll move to the to the next question but thank you that was really interesting to hear about the importance of dried fish as a survival food so i'd like to ask now a similar question to gayathri actually so gayathri you're currently in sri lanka but you were working doing research under dfm in cambodia as well so similar question to you how do you see the the the 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 think i mean i'll start with the last part of your question i mean you know most of my work had been in in south asia in sri lanka primarily so the when i first moved to cambodia for to carry out this research for dried fish matters project i think the first thing you know the first kind of shift shifting of lenses that i had to do was to start appreciating start recognizing freshwater fish as you know this popular for for people because i come from an you know from an island nation and i i grew up very close to the sea in sri lanka so we you know we are very we are socialized into consuming uh 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 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 so this is sourced from the ton lesap the lake as well as the mekong and the tributaries india is also a rice like paddy the fish that comes from the paddy piers you know there is there's a whole system attached as well so i think that is one of the big changes that i noticed when i went then then of course you know living there and then you know consuming my own consumption patterns also had to you know adjust to this so that's that's that's one part of it if i talk about you know 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 but it's it's processed and it can be saved it can be kept without refrigeration for you know one year two years three years so i think the this diverse you know product range itself shows how important it is for the cambodian cuisine if i talk a little bit in detail about the fish space what is called prehawk in in kumar i think very similar to the the example that cc explained of how important how intersect this process product to the diet of these people especially during the either lean periods of fishing so the dry dry seasons which when there's you know 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 so there are these big nets called back die die fishing the package that operate on one part of the and there is an abundance of fish catch and this is actually then processed it's in into different varieties but a lot of is actually because this is small fish it's processed into fish paste and this with rice becomes the main food for you know especially the rule especially for the rule of people agricultural communities there are also trends 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 some of the younger generations perhaps their knowledge on producing or making fish processed fish based dishes are actually reducing and there seems to be also a little bit of trend at least in the urban areas in cambodia that their preference of their food patterns perhaps are also changing
[BEN] okay thank you gayathri that's fascinating and i'd also like to ask a follow-up question about cambodia actually so in the presentation that you gave it really highlighted the diversity of different groups that are involved in terms of gender age ethnicity nationality religion and so i wondered if you could comment a bit about how maybe some different sort of groups of people experience or ascribe or gain value from from dried fish in different ways
[GAYATHRI] sure so i mean i could talk about scales for example so when i at at one level it's it was really difficult to segregate differentiate between the people who catch fish and people who process fish and people who actually market fish because in certain cases they were all the same the same group of people same family would be doing all of these as well this could be for their own consumption but they were also marketing these products so you know on the one hand and these are the people that actually live on the the water bodies especially in these floating villages on the tonlessa so so there was this but then when you go you know 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 you know more important in the diet because i think about 75 percent of the protein intake of cambodians are actually from these aquatic products fresh and processed and so and we could also observe you know in terms of groups when you go to the more coastal areas again interestingly of course obviously there is a lot more production happening in using products varieties from the sea marine products but there was also a preference for like prahoc for example which is coming from the Tonle Sap right so it you couldn't actually you know even differentiate and save so people who live in the coast actually like sea fish and sea based products they still preferred you know some of the freshwater products products as well so these are some of the differences and then if i briefly talk about the gender dimensions most of the processing at least at the home home base level and the medium the small scale level actually managed and run by women the slightly larger scale processing units were then you know gradually being managed by men but a lot of the workers were still women as tara said there were you know gender disparities in terms of wages and all that but still we could see a very high presence of women at all ages from very young girls to you know grandmothers involved in this process
[BEN] okay thank you very much so i'd like to stick with that theme now actually of freshwater versus marine coastal versus inland and and moved to bangladesh and asked 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] thank you very much ben can you hear me yes thank you okay thank you very much you know in bangladesh the dried fish sector is really huge and i don't know how many million people are involved with the wider value chain from catching fish bringing to the drying yard and then processing so it's really huge and what we found in the main sector in some of the landing centers we found that whatever and although we have some major spaces like bombay duck ribbon fish and some anchovies but there are also some other ethnic thing like we have oyster and other things are dried and known as petty only the ethnic tribal community on jungle and also we have one fermented product in the marine sector called nakti and it is only eaten by the ethnic tribal people and so these are really regarding the value the many people and their food nutrition and livelihood depends on the marine dried sector and there are also there are times there are season in the year people only have access to dried fish for that for their protein and this is really cheap and people can afford and accessible to them and when it comes to the free shorter things there are several a few of these spaces are really very important like the birds the purity is very important all over the north and northeastern part of the country and hundreds and thousands of tons of footage are dried and also the fermented product the chair power sedum mainly made from putty initially it used to be made only from putty but last i think 15-20 years at the footage diversity under threat and both the demand and price are increasing so people started to ferment marine ngop by santa and so this this is huge value chain and what we found that not only the people in bangladesh are eating those things also there are i think several hundred thousand peoples in the overseas the bangladeshi diaspora they also they are very fond of those both the dried and fermented products so those are going to overseas and there are also market oriented actually where i was born and brought up i i didn't eat any dried fish in my bollywood i didn't know anything about the dried fishing in that part of bangladesh but as i came to my municipal study and later i involved with start with that i found that the sector is really really huge and many people if you see we found the people in cox's bazar even their fresh fish but still they would like to eat the dried precipitation sometimes when some people go to other places they bring some gift and that that must be the dried grease or convented fish so these things are really huge having said that this is going on for i don't know hundreds of years but it's still what i found that the government policymakers are sort of like they're very oblivious with the secret they just don't actually don't know or visualize how big the sector is and what are the pros and cons of the sector what will be the problem what are the problems and what are the prospects of the sector so and what i feel that through this drive is matter project it's a long project and hopefully the way we are working the and as we the biologists are involved with the anthropology sociology so hopefully there will be much more and much clearer visualization of dried fish in bangladesh thank you very much
[BEN] thank you very much it's a really nice overview of the the situation in bangladesh so kind of following on from the from 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 and what what actions do you think could help to support dried fish value chains to create more positive values
[ANUPAMA] yes in sri lanka actually no any national policies for related with the dried fish but policy oriented researchers many of a number of policy oriented researchers can be available so under different categories such as a production market channel and market strategies and nutrient and quality standard values these types of things so we can actually we should extract these information from these researchers and we can develop national policy for this related with the dried fish industry yes i think this is the way we can do this okay thank you and so 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 sort of bring out the the best of the values of the sector actually i think the when we compare with the fish organized dried fish organization fish organizations are more strong but dried fish organizations are not like that so therefore we can do something to increase and expand of this dried fish processing and trading organizations and increasing their voices within fisheries sector as well we can actually we can do this using policies and yes i think this is very helpful to uh making policies
[BEN] okay thank you very much i'd i'd like to ask invite now shalika to answer answer a question so is there anything that you've learned in your research so far with with dfm that's challenged your expectations about dried fish yes actually there is a lot of challenges for dry pitch processors and traders
[SHALIKA] in the sri lanka relating to the technology lab utilization market opportunities there is no proper market opportunities there are no proper lab utilization technique and there is no proper dry fish association in sri lanka also rome there is no good connection between trader and processor and there is no better raw material supply and most of the dried fish production production technique or value addition technique all the things are comparatively very low low low standard and that especially i have to mention there is no strong technology utilization and dry fish processor association in sri lanka these things are mainly affected economic strength of the dried fish processor and other value chain actors in android which industry in sri lanka these things challenges
[BEN] okay thanks very much so similar kind of 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 okay so maybe now we can have a just a wider question for the for the group that anyone can answer if they'd like so have you identified any changes that are taking place in the way that dried fish is valued in in any of your study areas so how how are the values associated with dried fish changing over time would anyone like to volunteer to answer that so see it please go ahead
[SISIR] sorry i could not complete my last one also but it's okay i think dried face this is a very interesting sector now with the the changing kind of the dom structure so so if we if we look at the whole fisheries sector and its influence in dry fish and the value associated to it by different stakeholders though the small scale fishers associate values as they used to do it because it is emanating from their historical and cultural perspective identity issues however in the value chain other actors are looking at it very differently now if i say in the east coast of west bengal and and yeah and orisa i see there is a lot of policy in partisan culture fisheries and and and there are a place-based fisheries like this place is like very good for shrimp cultivation so so specific emphasis on species alters the whole management and kind of catch dynamics into the systems and that is creating lot more changes in the sea space itself and with the relationship with the fishing phasing systems and the issue is that now people are getting the same input for poultry feed for fish female for many others so bm structure is changing in in that sense the the whole dynamics within the fishing community is changing earlier people used to drive for per food all the fishers coming dry for food and there is a psychological and social kind of attachment to this kind now there are segments within that and now i see in my in the village i am working in so there are few new kind of a system is emerging where one big big people having big net big boats they're consolidating at that some are consolidating for fish feed some are consolidating for face mold some are still going for particular food things but the problem is that market dynamics is market system is not that organized in that way so that people who are into this dried fish sun drying and everything at times losing out so that's a major tension happening at the community level and there is change happening in the face chain and in terms of value i think with the the kind of transportation with the kind of competition within the space and the kind of auctioning systems and the trade systems are changing now peace are getting also changed exchanged within this among the people like orissa is giving a lot of fish to bangladesh in terms of shrimp we are getting lot more hilsa and those kind of from bangladesh from from here so so dragon wheat fish kind of a dynamics also changing so there are a lot more change happening at that space and there are also policy impetus is like orisa is a space you are aware that world faces work that we are now bringing nutrition and dried fish together into a midday ml and kind of social protection programs and their new new actors like ssgs are coming up so there is a traditional fisher communities and their association and there is a government promoted sg and those kind of networks coming in investment is coming in so there are changes happening in that so there are good and therefore there are also there are kind of muddy waters at that level so so now there are a lot of there is a space for look at all these issues and see how the traditional officers and this kind of institutional arrangements can work together for a for a better kind of economic and social value at the community level
[BEN] okay thank you very much so that's a really interesting pattern there with sort of the the drive the policy drive towards aquaculture sort of contributing to this competition for for fishes food and the changing dynamics associated with that we're coming towards the end of the session but i see tara has a hand up so if you'd like to give a quick comment tara and then then we will close the session
[TARA] yeah no i think i just have a very quick comment i think i almost endorsed what you know said but i my point is this like in order to think about a policy solution to understand the changing structure of you know dry fit sector we need to really look at the fisheries sector in general you know not a piecemeal sort of an approach would do any good to dry fish as a as a sub sector we need to really rethink reimagine how we look at fisheries development per se as a you know as as a currency in the world market so that you can make more and more foreign exchange using the newer technologies whether it is aquaculture or mariculture or blue revolution or whatever it is but i think we are just looking at fisheries as just a currency which which can enhance the national i think that has to completely change even to make the dried fish values different yeah that's all thank you
[BEN] thank you tara so really advocating for a sort of food systems approach to to understanding fish as a whole and that where where dried fish fits into that i don't know whether we're allowed to to go over but i see a hand apples over mustafa derek do we do we have time for another another response i'm not in charge actually so i would ask ratana what whether we have to have a hard cap or whether we can go on for a few more minutes rather are you still there i would say let's just keep going then if we don't have five minutes i think they say okay there we go yeah thanks okay so maybe then a last comment from from mustafa and then some quick sort of closing closing remarks
[MOSTAFA] thank you very much i just would like to point out on things in a recent actually study experiment we found that microplastics in our dried fish and it's it's not a very little amount it's large amount of microplastics present in all the dried fish we analyzed so this is could be a new area and i would like to ask the partner countries if they have any idea what about the microplastic in their product and also other chemicals if they can and they would like to see how it's going on using the because microplastics is a big problem global problem and in the marine and in the freshwater sector in the fresh piece there are microplastics so like the same microplastics when it comes to that right product it become concentrated actually three to four times so if you if you would like to see your product and the microplastic in them please you can have some even some small studies to to find out the microplastic your new product thank you very much
[BEN] yeah thank you very much that's a an emerging trend and quite a quite a worrying one um that we're starting to see so 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 a what an incredibly interesting subject this is there are just so so many angles that to explore i think something comes through really clearly from all of the the presentations is diversity 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 from from west bengal is so the the need for really transdisciplinary research such as i think dfm is is helping to to bring together to to understand this diversity and make sense of it across scales across multiple sites and so i i think this is yeah sort of sort of uh evidence that we're kind of moving moving slowly towards this this goal and hopefully by the end of the project we will have a a much more complete sort of understanding of this this whole fascinating world
