Outcomes

At the broadest project level, Dried Fish Matters aims to advance outcomes that are consistent with its guiding objectives of establishing a greatly improved understanding of social economies of dried fish in South and Southeast Asia, documenting their importance for wellbeing and nutrition, and documenting and improving policy, governance, and development in support of dried fish producers and consumers. 

DFM is working towards these outcomes as follows:

Objective 1: Mapping the social economy of dried fish in South and Southeast Asia 

The impact of DFM in the area of mapping is evident in the project’s outputs as enumerated elsewhere on our website. These outputs collectively have contributed a density of empirical understanding of dried fish social economies across the region. While DFM has not achieved a regional visual mapping of dried fish in South and Southeast Asia, the project’s research has generated a database of information that conveys the rich social economic diversity of dried fish and considerable evidence of the interconnections that cut across South and Southeast Asia. 

Objective 2: Demonstrating the contribution of dried fish to wellbeing and nutrition 

DFM has amply demonstrated the importance of dried fish across a variety of indicators that include nutritional, cultural, economic, and livelihood values. These values have been documented qualitatively, visually, and quantitatively.  

Objective 3: Supporting social economies of dried fish through improved policy, governance, and development 

In the final two years of the project from 2025 to 2027, a priority for DFM is to synthesize project findings and recommendations for policy, governance, and development to support dried fish producers and consumers. Project research has generated numerous insights into opportunities for interventions but has also underscored the very significant complexities that will make interventions challenging and uncertain. 

In addition to these outcomes directly tied to core project objectives, DFM has also realized other outcomes: 

• Consistent with its broad ethical and methodological commitment to collaborative process, DFM has helped to advance deliberative approaches to fisheries as food systems. 

• The social economy foundations of DFM have also contributed conceptually to thinking about fisheries as food systems. 

• These collaborative and holistic project orientations have also served as the foundation for process-oriented policy, governance, and development recommendations to support dried fish social economies, including successor projects. 

• DFM has helped build substantial capacity in its areas of focus among students, early career researchers, practitioners, and established scholars. 

• DFM has been successful in building collegial and productive North-South collaborations.