Aquaculture farmer organizations and cluster management: concepts and experiences

Pangasius
species. 

---

Aquaculture farmer organizations and cluster management – Concepts and experiences
8
aquaculture products are produced) are key requirements for the development of a 
responsible and sustainable aquaculture sector. These frameworks should cover all 
aspects of aquaculture and its value chain, provide economic incentives that encourage 
best practices, prompting and assisting farmers to elaborate, support and enforce 
self-regulating management codes, and promote sustainability-conducive production 
systems. However, the inadequate financial and skilled human capacity in developing 
countries to enable better governance and management of the sector could threaten 
aquaculture development efforts in the future. 
The combined effects of liberalization and globalization have also increased 
economic differentiation among communities and households, and State withdrawal 
from agricultural marketing has contributed to a highly uncertain environment in 
which input and output prices are determined by the market, often favouring larger 
producers who are better able to manage price variability and/or absorb price shocks. 
State withdrawal from input markets and service provision has left a vacuum, especially 
in remote areas where incentives for private-sector service provision are lacking. 
These global trends require changes in management for both large- and small-scale 
farmers to remain competitive. Larger farmers have a much higher capacity than small- 
scale farmers to adapt and benefit from such trends. Small-scale aquaculture farmers are 
exposed to increased market risks, face enormous constraints in accessing markets and 
services and integrating into modern supply chains, and are ill-equipped to benefit fully 
from the new market environment and knowledge, resulting in potentially significant 
social implications for many rural producers. Despite these challenges, however, the 
aquaculture sector is growing, and small-scale aquaculture remains highly innovative 
and makes a significant contribution to global aquaculture production. There are many 
opportunities to improve the governance and management of the aquaculture sector 
and thus increase the social and economic benefits to small-scale farmers. One such 
opportunity lies in promoting and developing collective action among small-scale 
producers in the form of FOs. 
Agriculture FOs have been widely studied, and the experiences of market-oriented 
agricultural products such as cocoa, coffee, horticulture products, milk and tobacco 
suggest that FOs and related institutional arrangements can be beneficial for enabling 
small farmers to access input and output markets and support market integration 
through mechanisms such as collective, high-volume procurement of inputs and 
reduction in transaction and marketing costs through joint processing and marketing 
of products. There is currently little documented information on group formation 
by commercially oriented small-scale aquaculture producers and related aquaculture 
institutional arrangements. However, recent experiences in the field show that 
promotion of aquaculture FOs and clustering of farms and/or farmers, and managing 
these clusters using appropriate BMPs can be successful tools for improving aquaculture 
governance and management in the small-scale farming sector, enabling farmers to work 
together, improve production, develop sufficient economies of scale and knowledge 
to participate in modern market chains, and reduce vulnerability. This governance 
and management approach is a way of improving the economic performance of the 
aquaculture sector and strengthening producers’ ability to participate in decision- 
making and self-regulation.
Many FOs have also failed. A large literature warns that FOs are harmed by attempts 
to encourage them to scale up too rapidly or to undertake too many or complex 
activities (Chirwa 
et al.
, 2005). They can also be undermined by subsidies, by a failure 
to focus on core commercial activities offering clear benefits to members, and by donor 
and government support and interference that treat them more as development agents 
than as private businesses (Stringfellow et al., 1997; Collion and Rondot, 2001; Lele, 
1981; Hussein, 2001; Kindness and Gordon, 2001; Hussi 
et al.
, 1993, Chirwa 
et al.
, 
2005).

---