Bangladesh team meeting 2024-02-06

Bangladesh Team Meeting

February 6, 2024

Key points:

·       As the project is approaching its end, Derek highlights prioritized activities to maximize value for money and discussed the need to strategically plan the use of available resources, considering both project needs and broader priorities at the Bay of Bengal or Bangladesh level.

·       Mahmudul raises the question of archiving project documentation and seeking input on the process of making them available online. He also emphasizes finalizing the scoping report before proceeding to future collaborations and publications.

·       The discussion focuses on tagging project images, with Siddiqur suggesting team members handle it. Derek proposes a tagging plan over two years and mentions involving DFM Central. Mahmudul suggests returning documents to the photographer for tagging.

·       Derek and Sami discuss laborer interviews and market dynamics, emphasizing the need to integrate diverse project elements effectively. Derek highlights priority areas like quality and contaminant analysis, while Sami warns against overgeneralizing conclusions.

·       Ben discusses a book on the Indonesian seaweed industry as a potential model for the DFM project, emphasizing the need for careful consideration of our approach and available material.

·       Siddiqur emphasizes the need to translating qualitative data into solid publications, proposing both global and local publications in Bangla.

·       Ben proposes considering the consumer survey on a larger scale.

·       Emdad emphasizes the importance of pushing for a specific policy for dried fish. He advocated for initiating dialogues and knowledge sharing to mobilize support for policy change, stressing the need to sow the seeds for meaningful improvements in the dried fish sector.

·       Derek acknowledges the importance of policy intervention in addressing dried fish contamination issues and emphasizes the need for evidence-based recommendations. He discussed budget constraints but expressed openness to exploring cost-effective strategies for policy influence. Derek underscored the significance of systematic contaminant analysis and suggested allocating resources accordingly.

·       Saiful shares insights from NGO models, emphasizes the importance of swift action, and suggests leveraging existing initiatives to influence policy change. He also highlights the need for collaboration between Sami and himself to mobilize support for policy recommendations.

Derek: All right, well, I think. We should get going. I'm not sure if anybody from BAU is planning to join. If you look at the previous minutes, the idea was to try to have more regular meetings of the Bangladesh team. To keep the momentum up.  But one of them would be just to get an update on the ongoing work from the Bangladesh team. But then the bigger one is more strategic, and that is To think about the resources that we have available and how to use those resources best. I'm working on something we need to consider, but there's also the Bay of Bengal or even Bangladesh-level prioritization.

We're approaching the end of the project, and we have relatively limited resources left. We've done the matrix, but there's more in it than we can fund, so we need to figure it out. What was the best value for money, really? So that's the bigger question, but maybe we could. Are there other specific issues people would like to talk about?

Mahmudul: In the meantime, I can update you on what we have done recently. We had two key deliverables: the finalization of the scoping report and the visualization project. The visualization part was completed much earlier. So, the question for me at the moment is how to share the visualization contents folder with DFM Central. The information is quite raw, and I am not sure to what extent that is valuable. I’ll be in touch with Mahfuz at some point, maybe tomorrow, to share the files.

Professor Siddikur and I found the final draft of the scoping report. The document has not yet been finalized because we haven't sent it to you. So my idea was to send that material first, and then discuss the next course of action. So this is something that we need to discuss. To get and think of another, you know. Grander publication. So this is something that we want to discuss.

We decided to have this meeting with Mahfuz during that last meeting. And have this, you know, three of us can think about that, but that is another deliverable that we want to discuss. But for me, I'm in favour of first finalizing the scoping report in whatever form it is now. there, you know, there can be remarks about the quality of this work, but still, I think we should tick box this particular item and then move on from there. The last thing, you know, was the huge anticipation for our research students' work. We want to discuss this with Mahfuz. First of all, our plan is to have this meeting 3 of us and then. We plan to have you know other Students; of course, they have graduated recently, but we are planning to have another second meeting. Let's see how we can really collaborate. You know for a publication. I'm trying to incorporate all these student work as well. So that's the plan so far.

Derek: One clarifying question, Mahmoud. You had said you talked about archiving. And I wasn't totally sure whether that was data and pictures or one or the other. Is it both?

Mahmudul: It's mostly images and pictures. There will be the question of archiving this document, but I think there's still some work to be done, especially for tagging and all that stuff. Also, the question of, you know, making this you know document available on the internet. These are the things that we need to discuss, whether that is really valuable or not, or is it just okay now for me to just hand over the document to DFM central?

Derek: One of the ambitions of the project was to create a digital archive. so what you're suggesting would be a useful illustration of how to go about that. So, if we could identify a process, select those photographs, and then tag them effectively, that would be a very useful model for the rest of the project. The question then would be how to do that. I think the identification of the best photos would have to be done by the photographers and the people who know the field. However, the tagging could potentially be delegated to a student. So, we could give a small contract to students too. To do that under the supervision of the photographers.

Siddiqur: I was thinking about whether some of us should do the tagging. Because we know the big or important thematic areas of the project and can identify some of the important masses. I think that would be more meaningful.

Derek: That does make sense. Then, we need to develop a plan for doing that, which could be one of the activities that we will work on over the coming two years.

Mahmudul: The photographers can tag themselves. We must return every document to the photographers and ask them to do that.

Derek: I mentioned the student assistant here because the platform we've developed for doing this is the wiki. It's not complicated, but it requires some time to learn. Anyone who has a set of photographs needs to learn the interface. So that's just something to put on the table. If we're going to use the wiki, then it would require a commitment.

Siddiqur: I think we can do it if there is some level of assistance from the DFM Central.

Derek: The other approach would be to develop a template. The photographers create captions and tags for each image, and then we've handed that over to a student assistant who does the data entry. However, I fully support the basic idea of sharing a substantial set of representative photographs. I think that's great for the project. It's great for the public to have an accessible digital archive as well. It also opens the possibility of doing a richly illustrated photo essay, a more comprehensive photo book for Bangladesh's social economy of dried fish. Sami, do you want to give a quick update about where things stand with you?

Sami: Yes, I will just continue with the photography. So, I like the idea of the photographer tagging the photos. Through my fieldwork, I have an enormous amount of photos. I can upload them into Wiki, but I have to caption them. Otherwise, it'll be very difficult to understand what this is about.

We have already completed the Sylhet production zone and workers. I was discussing with Ben the other days from the last 20 days that the largest group couldn't talk to us, but that was taken care of yesterday; they did talk to us.

I mean, the first one we talked to, the arotder, was very friendly, so we actually requested him to talk to the largest one. So far, out of around 46 wholesalers, we have competed with around 33 of them. On Sunday, they will move to Asadgons, the real challenge. So we're hoping Ben can visit on the sixteenth or seventeenth. I was discussing that with Ben because there's no other way to interview arotders there unless Ben shows up.

Mahmudul: So it's always good to have a white anthropologist with us when we're doing anthropology at home.

Derek: In that email exchange with Ben, you also mentioned interviewing the largest proportion of labourers possible. Were you able to do that in the end?

Sami: We are doing the casual labor right now. So we are expecting to compete with all of them if they're willing to give the interview. I guess out of 30, I want to target 27 of them. So that should be done by Saturday. And then, after Ramadan in April, when we go back to see that for the consumer survey, we can interview the permanent workers in the shops.

Derek: I'm trying to remember from the methodology. You, you had done a census, you had counted the number of aratders in Chittagong already, haven't you?

Sami: It should be 10 or 12. In total, 20 to 25 traders control at least 80% of the dried fish market in Bangladesh. And the sales volume is huge. So, Masimpur is much smaller than Assadgonj. The largest trader we interviewed said his last trading day was Thursday in Massimpur, and 54 sales went through him. His commission is 6%.

When you look back at the women workers in the production zone, they're paid a lower wage rate; for example, in Cox’s Bazar, the daily wage is 400 taka for a full day's work, which is 200 taka for a full day's work in Sylhet.

Derek: Good work, Sami. The Bangladesh team's work produces lots of really rich pieces. Over the next five years, the challenge will be how to put those pieces together well, so we need to keep talking about that. And think about Mahfuz's work, too. Mahfuz has a similar depth of qualitative data. How can we bring that together over the following years and not lose momentum on continuing to work on it? I think it is a key question to think about.

Mahfuz’s analysis writing is ongoing but has been slowed by various circumstances.

A major issue for the Bangladesh team and for consumers in Bangladesh is the unreliability of product quality. so I'm just wondering from working group 3 whether this is an issue that we really want to foreground. In the next phase of research, I'm just going to check a bunch of ideas on the table here. One idea would allow the Bangladesh team to make connections to potential work in Southeast Asia very explicitly. So, the other work comprehensively understands the social economy of dried fish in Bangladesh. That's working group one; Mahfuz and Sami’s work and the scoping work of the Bangladesh team are all centred on that.

The other area of work identified in the matrix, which came out strongly, is contaminant analysis. Fourthly, there's the visual dimension. Mahmoud was talking about this. But then there's Sara Nurse, the possibility of Sara Nour doing a major ethnographic film or a couple of smaller ethnographic films to articulate Mahfuz and Sami's work. A few other smaller projects intersect with that as well, and they are represented in the matrix. But if I had to put my finger on four priority areas. Those would be the priority areas.

Sami: One concern is that we shouldn't focus too much on generalizing conclusions from the entire work because each side is so unique, dynamic, and fluid that it changes over time. We should be careful about drawing generalized conclusions.

When I did some of the policy interviews and my surveys, it was difficult in Bangladesh because one modality of business is mistrust. Yeah, it's a very common modality. We do now have packaging labels that save organic. However, even the consumers know that this is not true.

So, on the policy, I would like to give a certain update. Before I started my surveys, I had completed half of the target interviews, but that's very high in the policy. So I am planning after I'm done with my quantitative surveys, I can do the rest of the target respondents in policy.

Derek: Ben, you had posted a link to a new book. Is this an illustration of what we potentially aim for?

Ben: Maybe. I mean, obviously. If we want to go that route, we have to think very carefully about what we want to do. The book is about the Indonesian seaweed industry in the context of globalization, so it's kind of on a comparable scale to what we're dealing with here. Statistics on trade and other things is really a detailed qualitative work on agrarian change in the context of the seaweed industry. So it's a mix of approaches, but it all comes together nicely. If you look at the author list for each of the chapters, it's kind of a small group of authors who have contributed to most of the chapters. If we want to go to that room, there's probably enough material.

Siddiqur: Ben is right. The Bangladesh team has lots of exciting qualitative data, and in the coming months, we are going to get even more. But I was wondering if this is the right time for us and the project pistolized ideas that best we can translate this data into more solid publications. In addition to the global publication, it would be really good to do some publication even in Bangladesh. With the amount of exciting data we have, we can even think of some creative way of publishing something in Bengali to make this project a kind of groundbreaking project so that it can be a source of inspiration for the rest of our students and scholars in the future. So this is why Mahfuz, Mahmoud, I are probably we are going to meet in a few days, probably in the eleventh or tenth.

If we have some sort of direction that I am personally looking for from the DFM Central, if we start to think that way, we can set up a book chapter or an article or a book. Then we can go back and look at our data and start revisiting and start writing, get comments, and try to get it a shape. I guess this team lacks some publications, even if we have lots of data done by our students and some of our colleagues. We are really lagging behind in translating those data into a very solid and serious publication. Some sort of guidance from DFM Central would really be helpful for us.

Derek: Thanks, Siddiqur. There's a lot of data. The challenge is to materialize it. We are now at the stage where we have a relatively limited budget. So, I've tried to think about how we can support a maximum level of effective publication of these rich data with the relatively limited resources we still have over the remaining period of the project.

The contaminant analysis was identified as a key area of interest that is something that we can consider. If we look at the Bangladesh team from a budgetary perspective, one of the major areas is funding students and postdoctoral fellowships, which would potentially be for Sami. A second one is funding to support Siddiqur in coming and spending some time in Manitoba to work with Mahfuz and Sami during the period after they finish their PhDs. The third one is for the contaminant analysis. The fourth is the funding to support Sara Noor in doing her master's research with a film output. Those are the most significant areas of focus. If we accept that allocation, there's very little money for any of the other activities in the matrix. So, let me just look at the matrix briefly; there was the idea of doing some public engagement activities that wouldn't be possible with that prioritization. Saiful had the idea to do a large-scale survey on consumer preferences. I don't think that would be possible either.

If we prioritize those 4 things that I mentioned, we have no contingency. That's sort of the reality of the situation at the moment.

Siddiqur: When I said the Bengali publication, I did not expect any resources from the project. I guess it is so tiny that it can even be taken care of by us.

Derek: I agree with that, and I was assuming that working with Mahmoud, Mahfuz, and Sami would be part of your mandate. But the advantage of having to pay for your time in the period after the two of them finished their PhDs.

Ben: So, I, yeah, I like what you've proposed. I mean, obviously, it depends in part on the availability when they finish the PhDs. This would really be a good way of getting that more synthetic output. The PhDs and the project end simultaneously, and then there's this huge volume of data sitting there unused. So, if it works for everyone concerned, then that seems like a really good approach. The film also seems like a really nice product, a different kind of product.

In terms of media engagement, I don't know that it necessarily has to cost a huge amount of money. BAU has good media contacts; maybe CNRS does, too. So yeah, we might be able to do Zoom media engagement without having to spend much money.

I can see my preferences. We already have Sami working on the consumer survey element. So yeah, you could do it on a larger scale and include more things.

Sami: I'll just continue from Ben's point about the consumer survey. I have mixed feelings about whether it would be better if they could do it on a larger scale. We would have more data, but at the same time, I feel like there shouldn't be any duplication of work. But were there any dimensions different from ours, as I only did the consumer survey in Cox’s Bazar? Sylhet and Dhaka are still left. So, if they have any important dimension that I was not covering, I can just put that in my questionnaire.

Derek: Consumer preference for safe, certified, and labelled dried fish and willingness to pay.

Ben: Maybe they are thinking in terms of experimental economics. How much will people pay for fish with different characteristics?

Sami: It was more like proxy questions that they discussed last time. Would you be willing to pay higher if the product was certified, and what percentage would you pay higher? I'm sure they would go into more detail, but we can always add a few questions. So Derek, my last point is that since you were discussing the budget, it reminds me, was this second installment for the CNRS process? Because we're going to Asap. G, and they're really going to ask for this now.

Derek: Yeah, I signed off on it a couple of weeks ago. So it should be transferred this Thursday.

So, this conversation about experimental approaches to consumer preferences is a bit different than what I was talking about earlier. I wonder if there's any way of thinking about more informal initiatives that would link consumers to producers in Bangladesh. I wonder if we could approach this more theoretically, based on the data that we've gathered, like knowing the structure and the conduct of dried fish value chains in Bangladesh once the analysis has been done. Could we speculate about where there might be niches for developing direct-to-producer connections?

Mahmudul: I think this is happening for other products in Bangladesh. This idea of direct, you know, is linked to the producer, which happens when there's mango season in Bangladesh, for example. So, there's already a niche market. The idea of small growers doing their agriculture in an organic way without fertilizers and chemical baths is present at the moment in Bangladesh, as well as other products. There is a consumer base already. The question, I mean, we don't know whether it is working properly.

Siddiqur: The example of market linkage that you gave from Cambodia has been in practice in Bangladesh; there are so many NGOs that are working with the local community people for organic vegetables. Connecting producers to the market and market development has been a great challenge. The producers sold their products at low prices while the consumers in Dhaka paid high for those products.  So, in the middle, there are challenges; many NGOs are trying to connect producers to consumers.

Mahmud is right. Most of the time, the sources of dried fish are still the big traders. Creating an alternate channel for consumption and linking producers to consumers might require innovative ideas. However, some studies found that although the retailer claims their product is organic, actually it's not. Once they are famous and become popular, they just buy the products at lower prices from other producers who are using this fertilizer. They label them as organic and make huge profits. So that is something that we need to be careful about. However, it is doable.

Mahmudul: I think Sami and Mahfuz probably know better than us, but I remember a similar initiative in Cox's Bazaar even 10 years ago. I met shop owners who were selling dried fish experimentally, with the help of an NGO. I really don't know what happened to those initiatives. I mean, maybe Sami and Mahfuz can follow up on that.

Sami: There have been NGOs trying that. But the results are not promising where we can come in. I would reiterate that there is already a niche client market for organic dried fish, but it's not organic at all. It's just the marketing tactics. However, compared to 10 years ago, consumers are located near dried fish zones like Sylhet and Chittagong are more aware of pesticides. Some producers in Nazirartek sell pesticide-free dried fish through Facebook; they have a small client market.  We have a scope to scale it up in Dhaka’s consumers because whatever organic they're selling in Dhaka is just for marketing purposes, nothing else. On the other hand, the NGO models were not sustainable because Worldfish has done it for 2 years. JAICA has been doing 4 years of market system development. The market system's sustainability is based on funding; once it stops, it doesn't work anymore.

The only transformation I find is that dried fish is really transforming from a poor man's product to an elite product. So, the initial market is for high-end consumers. There are certain shops in Asadgonj that will sell very organic, very tasty dried fish that they will only sell for government clients. They say these are for VIPs, these are for VIP influential customers. There's a foreign market for that as well. There's always a chance to scale it up.

Emdad: Formalin control for mangoes is a success story. If you compare it to 20 years ago, is there any lesson that could be applied to dried fish contamination issues? The way they succeeded in controlling formalin in mangoes, could there be some lessons that could be brought into the context of dried fish contamination?

Sami: One common assumption in this sector is that producers use DDT. However, the DoF official has confirmed that DDT has been banned in Bangladesh for the last 10 years. The last lot of DDT was actually sent to France for safe disposal twelve years ago. We don't even import it anymore. That's not there anymore. The problem is that pesticides, which actually act, are used. We found that this decreased in relation to 3 to 7 years ago because of DoF training and NGO training in Naziratek. It's still dominant, but it has decreased relatively.

Yes, there is scope, but there is no specific policy for dried fish. It is not clear under what section of the act to control pesticides in catfish. So, in the new fishery.

Emdad: I was going exactly in that direction, and I came back to Derek's earlier that, you know, in two and a half years, where does the Bangladesh team want to go? I think you hit the nail, you know, very rightly that the dried fish policy. If we could push something from this project, that would be a significant contribution of the project. In order to mobilize for a specific policy for dried fish, I think that would be the direction to move forward. I guess this is something that we discussed in the Kolkata meeting. So, it's in the metrics, I guess.

Siddiqur: We need to achieve this in the next two and a half years.

Emdad: In a policy intervention, more specific directions should be given so that safe dried fish can be marketed and made more affordable. So that's why it should be pushed for a specific policy, and it is possible and doable.

Derek: It's clear to me, though, in the budget we have no available funds to engage in an actual intervention.

Ben: What's needed is a policy intervention, so there's no policy on the books at the moment for allowable levels of pesticide in dried fish, for instance. Policy is one thing; enforcement is another, but you first need the policy in order to enforce it. Maybe it might be ambitious to think that we can produce enough evidence to bring that policy change about, but we could try; we could at least start trying to have the conversations. An intervention that doesn't necessarily have to cost a lot of money.

Derek: I accept that, and I didn't mean to say that policy work wasn't possible. It's absolutely possible if we pursue this model of funding labour time for at least three members of the team. What I'm just saying, though, is that an active intervention of the sort that is proposed for Cambodia may actually take place in Indonesia and the Philippines on a small scale, which is not possible within our budget.

Sami: This is an ideal time to go for it because I talked with the director of inspection and quality control at DoF. In the new fishery policy in progress, they tell us that they're going to include a section for dried fish where they will give all these. All these kinds of points are for you to use medicines or pesticides. But they don't share details.

Emdad: Ben, you got me right that I was not thinking of policy intervention or anything major. From my own experience working in a number of areas in Bangladesh and elsewhere, I know that you need to, you know, sew the seed. We couldn't make much difference, but we started these dialogues and knowledge products in mobilization. It can improve this sector tremendously. All of this academic work and other work all the time, along with our concentration, can bring about meaningful results if we have the vision to sew the seed now and mobilize a few things.

There is a policy regarding that fish so that it is a safe, better, and more affordable product. It addresses all the issues about intermediaries, child labor, and women's exploitation.

Derek: The one new area of original research identified in those priority areas I talked about earlier is the systematic contaminant analysis study. So that I can articulate the very best-ever understanding of the dry fish economy that the team has generated over the last 5 years, so, if you put those together, Hopefully, we will have a very powerful basis for making policy recommendations.

We can say this is where contaminants enter into the production system, and these are the social or economic reasons.

Saiful: Many initiatives, like the NGO models, are discussed. I was also recently involved with several projects in Bangladesh, particularly one implemented by PKSF. They normally implement; they don't do anything themselves; their partner organization does everything.

Derek: Saiful suggests moving a little quickly on our part, which could be quite important.

Emdad: Derek, I think this is the time. That's why I think the comments and his observations are very important. We have relevant findings, and it's very easy to feed.

Derek: Sami and Saiful should discuss how best to mobilize Sami's policy-relevant findings, in particular, to influence what's going on. Maybe the two of you guys could have a conversation about this and then bring that back to this group. We can think about strategies to influence.

We're getting to the end of the meeting periods. Is a regular frequency of meetings one that all of you think is still valuable? Roughly monthly or six weekly meetings to keep the momentum going. Are we good with that?

Siddiqur: I think monthly is fine, I guess. Keep the moment I'm going.

Derek: Okay, so I believe there's going to be a working group meeting next week. That meeting is specifically going to focus on the contaminant question. From my point of view, the critical issue for DFM Central is how much of the budget we need to allocate to that work. If we can do it relatively efficiently and save some money there, that will potentially open up more money or other aspects of DFM. But at the same time, I recognize how critical that work is and how it was identified as a critical priority for the group at Kolkata. So, if those of you can join that, that discussion will be quite important in finding out the planning for the project's next phase.

The second or third week of March would be the next meeting date.