Aquaculture farmer organizations and cluster management: concepts and experiences

3.4.9 Processing
Some FOs process produce to add value and thus access markets further along the 
market chain; however, none of the aquaculture FOs reviewed for this study are yet 
involved in processing activities. 
BOx 9
Certification
Certification is rapidly being introduced to the aquaculture sector, and the number of 
certification programmes and labels for aquaculture products is rising. Certification is 
viewed as a way to encourage more sustainable aquaculture production; however, this trend 
represents a serious challenge to small-scale aquaculture farmers due to:
• the small volumes of product from individual farms and the large numbers of farms;
• low or no market incentives to become involved in certification;
• complex marketing channels, making traceability difficult;
• limited access to market, technical and business knowledge and related infrastructure;
• limited or inequitable access to financial services for investment in changes that may 
be required for certification;
• lack of formal farm registration and producers’ groups;
• inadequate trader-credit relations;
• commercial/government servicing less oriented towards the small-scale farmer; and
• risk management strategies of larger traders and buyers requiring large volumes of 
product working against small-scale farmers producing small quantities of product.
If certification is not to have a negative impact on small-scale producers, these issues 
need to be addressed. It is extremely important to engage small-scale farmers in the 
development of certification schemes to ensure equitable participation. There is a need to 
better understand the processes, standards, their applicability and the related opportunities 
and challenges in order for small-scale farmers to benefit from certification systems.
It seems unlikely that many individual small-scale farms will be able to be easily 
certified in the near future and, as yet, no certification scheme targets the small-scale sector. 
However, there could be significant social and economic benefits if the small-scale sector 
can be effectively serviced to become certified and participate in modern market chains. 
One way forward is the promotion of group certification or certification of clusters of 
small-scale farmers, an approach that has been used successfully in other agriculture sectors 
(e.g. organic products) and has now been shown to be possible in the aquaculture sector 
through two of the National Centre for Sustainable Aquaculture’s shrimp farmer societies 
in India being organically certified and by the Samroiyod Cooperative in Thailand being 
well on its way to having some of its shrimp being Fairtrade certified.
Source
: Phillips 
et al.
(2007).

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