Aquaculture farmer organizations and cluster management: concepts and experiences

6.3.2 Group certification 
A key challenge facing small-scale aquaculture producers is the increasingly strict 
quality and safety requirements demanded by buyers of aquaculture products. The 
importance of product certification is increasing, and even though meeting these 
requirements is a challenge for producers, as with most challenges, it also represents a 
significant opportunity for small-scale aquaculture producers to offer quality products. 
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 to do this is the promotion of group certification or certification of clusters 
of small-scale farmers. This approach is being successfully used in other agricultural 
sectors and is now beginning to be used in the aquaculture sector, with the organic 
certification of two of NaCSA’s shrimp farmer societies in India.
6.3.3 Implementation of better management practices through cluster 
management 
As discussed in Chapter 3, cluster management (the collaborative management of 
aquaculture production by farmers) has recently been shown to be a successful 
mechanism to empower small-scale rural aquaculture farmers by improving productivity 

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Conclusion
and ensuring safe and responsible aquaculture production. Cluster management has 
been successfully used as a tool by NACA and other organizations, including FAO, 
to facilitate the implementation of BMPs for small-scale aquaculture development in a 
number of countries, such as India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Viet Nam. The case study 
of the NaCSA’s farmer societies and clusters in Andhra Pradesh, India (summarized in 
Chapter 3 and presented in full in Appendix 2), shows the very real potential that cluster 
management has for benefiting small-scale aquaculture farmers. Through collective 
implementation of BMPs, the NaCSA’s farmer societies have succeeded in increasing 
production levels and the quality of shrimp, increasing their profits as a result of decreased 
costs, increased output prices, decreased disease risks and increased market access, even 
achieving organic certification of two societies. These achievements are due primarily 
to the implementation of BMPs within farmer societies and clusters and show what a 
significant opportunity this is for small-scale aquaculture farmers all over the world. 
Central to the success of the NaCSA’s farmer societies and clusters is the 
implementation of appropriate BMPs that were developed by NACA. BMPs are not 
fixed and the components of the BMPs need to be constantly reviewed and improved 
so as to meet the changing needs of the culture environment and technology. For 
this, continued assistance of support institutions would be necessary. Thus, in order 
for cluster management to provide a real opportunity for farmers, FOs need to be 
supported in developing appropriate BMPs for their different commodities and the 
range of contexts in which they operate. BMPs should reduce disease occurrence and 
costs of farming, improve growth performance, enhance environmental conditions 
by minimizing the impact of farming on the local environment, help farmers to attain 
food quality standards, improve the marketability of their produce and ultimately 
facilitate the sustainability of farmers’ aquaculture production activities. In this way, 
cluster management and the adoption of BMPs provides a clear opportunity to achieve 
beneficial impacts to small-scale aquaculture farming systems.