Aquaculture farmer organizations and cluster management: concepts and experiences

3.4.6 Coordinating production
To take advantage of different market opportunities and respond to the needs of 
buyers, FOs may have to coordinate the production of members. For example, FOs 
may be required to supply a continuous amount of fresh produce throughout the 
year, so they may need to organize members to stagger the stocking of their ponds. 
The NaCSA’s farmer societies and the ALSC farmers in Indonesia also coordinate 
production; however, at present they do so primarily to reduce disease risks. To achieve 
this, farmers develop a crop plan together and stock their ponds within a specified 
period of one another (in Andhra Pradesh, India, for example, farmer societies stock at 
the time when white spot disease is at its lowest level). 
BOx 8
Case Study 5: Aquaculture Livelihood Service Centres in Aceh, Indonesia
In response to the tsunami in December 2004, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) initiated 
the Earthquake and Tsunami Emergency Support Project (ETESP) in Aceh, Indonesia, 
to rebuild the livelihoods of the coastal communities that were most affected. A major 
component of the project focused on fisheries and aquaculture (ETESP-Fisheries). Three 
years were spent rehabilitating 3 000 hectares of shrimp ponds (tambaks). Between 2007 
and 2009, in a process facilitated by the Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific 
(NACA) in collaboration with the ADB-ETESP project and the International Finance 
Corporation (IFC), 3 689 farmers in 72 villages and five subdistricts established milkfish 
and shrimp FOs in order to reduce disease risk and maximize profits through collective 
implementation of BMPs developed by NACA. In 2009, these FOs established four 
“Aquaculture Livelihood Service Centres” (ALSCs). In the absence of government and 
other private-sector extension services in Aceh, these centres are expected to become fully 
self-sustaining service centres for FOs through payment of service fees by members. The 
ALSCs are owned and managed by community-based milkfish and shrimp farmers, and 
the committee members are drawn from the fish-farming communities of their respective 
subdistricts. The four ALSCs are expected to function as a network or “cluster” of service 
centres and, as such, the committee members and lead farmers of the centres form the 
leadership for a producer association at the district level to further business developments 
in collaboration with various associated service providers such as hatchery operators, inputs 
suppliers, processors and exporters.
The principal role of the ALSCs is to provide technical and business expertise to farmers. 
Their activities include: 
• facilitating group crop planning, including harmonized stocking and harvesting in 
collaboration with various stakeholders to minimize the risk of disease outbreaks 
during farming and improve the overall quantities simultaneously harvested from 
many small-scale producers;

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