Aquaculture farmer organizations and cluster management: concepts and experiences

Group certification
New trends and requirements in production and marketing of aquaculture products, 
such as traceability, ecolabelling and certification, were first seen as a challenge by 

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farmer societies; however, with the recent achievement of organic certification by 
two societies, they are now viewed as an opportunity. NACA, NaCSA and MPEDA 
are currently developing guidelines for group certification to enable societies to seek 
group certification from independent third-party certifiers or to propose voluntary 
self-certification. These guidelines are being developed independent of commodity and 
certification standards in order to support farmers to potentially meet a wide range of 
certification standards such as organic, Fairtrade, ACC and GLOBALGAP.
Policy influence
With the increasing success and high profile of farmer societies and their strong links 
to the government through NaCSA and MPEDA, there is great opportunity for 
farmer societies to influence policies in favour of small-scale aquaculture farmers and 
aquaculture farmer organizations. Favourable policies, such as registration of input 
suppliers and mandatory testing for antibiotics, have helped to improve the quality of 
inputs and prevent advantage being taken of farmers. The agriculture sector receives 
many government benefits such as infrastructure and subsidies; however, aquaculture 
is not viewed as being part of the agriculture sector and thus does not receive the same 
benefits. The involvement of society leaders in NaCSA’s Governing Council is the first 
step in the process of influencing policy decisions in favour of small-scale aquaculture 
farmers. Once there are a substantial number of societies in the country (more than 
500), societies are planning to establish a national-level federation of all societies that 
will help influence national government policies.