World Food Policy Volume/Issue 2-2/3-1 Fall 2015/Spring 2016 | Page 46

Developing Local Sustainable Seafood Markets: A Thai Example

gear) and household activities (Bailey et
al. 2016). In exchange for these services,
fishers are often indebted or bonded to
the MP, selling their product at a lower
price, and prevented from selling their
catch to another buyer.

A challenge for the Shop, as paying
a price premium is reorganizing the value
chain, is to interrupt these longstanding
relationships without causing strife or
removing the MP altogether (Bailey et
al. 2016). This is especially important as
the Shop can only source small volumes
of seafood product, and fishers need to
maintain their relationships with MP.
Fishers who have “kaew”—a Thai word
that describes the debt held with a MP—
may be excluded from accessing the Shop.
For example, several fishers with “kaew”
said they could not sell their seafood to
the Shop explaining that they must pay
back the MP. Those fishers who could sell
to the Shop indicated that this is because
they either have no debt or because the
MP they sell to knows of the Shop and
allows them to sell a portion of their catch
to the Shop. In areas where the Shop has
a well-established presence, selling to the
Shop may not be an issue given the small
amount of seafood the Shop currently
can source, yet fisher–MP relations will
undoubtedly pose challenges as the Shop
expands.

and packaging seafood, to marketing,
selling, and distributing products to
consumers. We found the most labor
intensive aspect of running the Shop is
procuring and processing the seafood.
The employee responsible for this
described her average day as follows: (a)
offloading boats and picking through
fish (after dark, late into the evening);
(b) cleaning and gutting fish to be ready
for morning processing (starting at 2 or
3 am); and, (c) processing and packaging
the fish with other workers (throughout
the day). The late afternoon and early
evening are the best time for this employee
to sleep: most people could not manage
these hours. Other staff face a similarly
significant workload. The Shop manager,
for instance, is in charge of finding
markets, connecting with the consumer,
managing public relations, supervising
the work of other employees, and is now
also responsible for developing the Blue
Brand label that Shop products will soon
be sold under.

Year 1 of any business venture is
labor intensive, and this is reflected in
talking with Shop employees. However,
as the Shop becomes more established
and hopefully with the name recognition
that should come with the Blue Brand
label, things will become easier. Working
conditions would also be enhanced for
employees if the Shop were to emphasize
Intense working conditions of Shop local seafood and concentrate their efforts
employees
on processing just a few key species. At
this point, our analysis suggests that the

Shop employees work long hours Shop does not have the labor to handle
and without overtime pay. Over the course individual consumer requests for specific
of its first year of operation, the Shop types of seafood products and for species
has employed four—sometimes five— n ot found in Prachuap Khiri Khan
women. These women are responsible for province.
everything from purchasing, processing,
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