NaCSa SuStaiNable aquaCulture projeCt

India

Umesh N.R.

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CONTENTS

CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................................ II

SUMMARY........................................................................................................................................... III

1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................1

2. PARTICIPATORY SYSTEMS ANALYSIS OF NACSA SHRIMP FARMERS...................................................................2

3. ANALYSIS..........................................................................................................................................6

3.1 Participating farmer groups ................................................................................................................ 6

3.2 Non-participating farmer groups ........................................................................................................ 7

4. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS ...................................................................................................8

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Location map of focus group sites of Thalarevu society farmers (coloured circle) and non-society farmers (black circle) in the state of Andhra Pradesh ...................................................................... 2 Figure 2: PSA graph for participating group in NaCSA sustainable aquaculture societies ........................... 4 Figure 3: PSA graph for non-participating group in NaCSA sustainable aquaculture societies .................... 5

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SUMMARY This short case study reports the results of the participatory systems analysis implemented through focus groups of shrimp farmers involved in NaCSA sustainable aquaculture projects. Although the projects are primarily meant to develop better management practices for greater sustainability of smallholder shrimp production in Southern India, the project has developed societies of farmers to allow them to market their products to quality-demanding export markets. The participatory systems analysis has enabled the project staff to understand the factors that lead shrimp farmers to decide to join the societies; it has also uncovered the reasons why the farmers who have chosen not to join such marketing societies have stayed away. The main motor factors that lead to farmer participation in marketing societies are the market incentives of export markets and witnessing the successful businesses of their peers. Developing such market incentives and giving farmers the opportunity to visit and interact with farmers already involved in the marketing chains have the potential to lead more shrimp producers into market-led and more sustainable production practices.

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1. INTRODUCTION

Coastal aquaculture in India is synonymous with shrimp aquaculture and mainly carried out by small-scale farmers. More than 90 percent of the shrimp farmers in India belong to the small-scale category with holdings of less than 2 ha per individual. These small-scale producers have inherent difficulties such as obtaining quality inputs like shrimp seed and feed at good prices, accessing resources and services, complying with market requirements and accessing better markets for their products. Shrimp farming in India is mainly export oriented.

In this background the National Centre for Sustainable Aquaculture (NaCSA) which is an outreach organization of the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) was established in 2007. NaCSA’s objective is the organization of small farmers into aquaculture societies, helping them implement Better Management Practices through capacity building among small farmers and facilitating better market access for their produce. A farmer society is a group of 20 to 70 aquaculture farmers in a farming cluster or locality, who implement Better Management Practices (BMPs) and manage the aquaculture activities through a participatory approach in order to meet market demands through sustainable shrimp farming. At present there are 5 312 farmers involved in 220 farmer societies from five coastal states. The objective of the participatory system analysis is to identify the factors impacting on farmers’ decision to participate or not to participate in NaCSA’s farmer societies which are implementing Better Management Practices (BMPs) through a sustainable aquaculture programme in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. NaCSA has 27 project field staff working on a full-time basis to provide on-farm technical services to the farmers through the formation and management of farmer societies. The main criteria used in selection of farmers to join the societies are:

1. Willingness to comply with farm registration; 2. Willingness to stock the seed within a given period of time; 3. Willingness to implement at least some of the key BMPs; 4. Willingness to cooperate with other farmers by forming a farmer society; and 5. Willingness to enter into an agreement with a processor to sell all their produce as one unit.

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2. PARTICIPATORY SYSTEMS ANALYSIS OF NACSA SHRIMP FARMERS This study reports the findings from the participatory systems analysis of Thalarevu village (Fig 1) in East Godavari District of Andhra Pradesh. In this village, 300 farmers are involved in shrimp farming, of which 174 farmers have been organized into five societies, and the rest are not involved in the programme. Other similar studies were implemented in villages of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka but are not reported here. The farmers involved in the focus groups were selected by the NaCSA field staff. The participating society farmers knew the field staff well and the PSA discussion could start with a brief introduction to the methodology. In non-participating groups more details about activities of NaCSA were given and the purpose of conducting the PSA discussions was explained. Some of the doubts raised by farmers were clarified before the start of the discussions. Figure 1: Location map of focus group sites of Thalarevu society farmers (coloured circle) and non-society farmers (black circle) in the state of Andhra Pradesh

Source: Google Maps, 2009 The elements identified by participating farmers from Thalarevu village and the specific description per element were as follows:

1. Government recognition. The farmer group (society) is recognized by the government, which helps them access many public beneficial schemes.

2. Financial assistance. Societies get financial assistance from the government to improve their infrastructure facilities.

3. Quality seed. Society farmers get good quality seed through a contract system and with the technical help from NaCSA.

4. Farm registration. Society farmers get assistance through NaCSA for the registration of their farms with the government. Farm registration is mandatory to join a society.

5. Technical support. NaCSA is working closely with farmers at the farm site to support implementation of BMPs.

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6. Market incentive. Society farmers have an opportunity to sell the shrimp in better markets for higher price and under a transparent trading system.

7. Cluster development. More farmers are organized under societies in a cluster, creating opportunities for overall development of the cluster through reduced crop loss and increased profit.

8. Farmer unity. Increased farmer unity within each society helping them address many issues. 9. Cost of production. Lower production costs are achieved through the development of common

infrastructure (eg. electrification of farms) and bulk purchase of inputs like seed and feed. The PSA graph for this farmer group is shown in Figure 2. The elements fall under all four quadrants. Symptom elements include government recognition and cluster development. Buffer elements include financial assistance and reduced cost of production indicating that these elements are of low importance with regard to farmer participation in NaCSA societies. The motor element quadrant has two factors: market incentive and quality seed. These two important factors have encouraged farmers to join the society. Critical elements include farmer unity, technical support and assistance in farm registration. These critical elements might have positively influenced the farmers to participate in the society. The elements identified by non-participating farmers from Thalarevu village and the specific description or response per element are as follows:

1. Market incentive. No perceived market benefits of joining a society. 2. Awareness. Poor awareness about society formation and BMPs. 3. Land ownership. Many farmers do not own land and are farming on leased land, which is

detrimental to investing on the farm. 4. Farm registration. Difficulty in obtaining farm registration for leased lands. 5. Crop loss. Having lost many crops due to disease they are not sure they will succeed by forming

a society. 6. Market fluctuations. Shrimp prices at the farm gate fluctuate based on offer and demand

causing distress to farmers. 7. Social issues. Farmers belong to different communities so it is not easy to come together within

a society. 8. Voluntary scheme. Formation of society is not compulsory to benefit from NaCSA assistance. 9. Economic issues. Poor farmers, inability to invest in increased cost of production due to BMP

implementation. 10. Farmer disunity. Lack of unity among farmers.

The PSA graph of this farmer group is shown in Figure 3. The elements fall under all four quadrants. Symptom elements include farm registration, farmer disunity, social and economic issues. Buffer elements include the voluntary nature of the scheme, indicating that this element is of low importance to farmer participation in a NaCSA society. Motor elements include market price fluctuation, market incentive, land ownership and crop loss. These elements could have discouraged them from joining a society. Critical elements include only awareness.

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Figure 2: PSA graph for participating group in NaCSA sustainable aquaculture societies

Coordinates of elements No. Elements Activity ratio Degree of

inter-relationship 1 Government

recognition 0.83 104

2 Financial assistance 0.99

70

3 Quality seed 1.14 48 4 Farm registration 1.22 103 5 Technical support 1.58 109 6 Market incentive 1.85 56 7 Cluster

development 0.79 158

8 Farmer unity 1.42 121 9 Cost of

production 0.07 10

90

180 Symptom Critical element

Buffer Motor

Deg

ree

of in

ter-

rela

tions

hip

Activity ratio 10

Quality seed

0 1

Farm registration

Cost of production

Technical support

Government recognition

Financial assistance

Market incentive

Cluster development

Farmer unity

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Figure 3: PSA graph for non-participating group in NaCSA sustainable aquaculture societies

Coordinates of elements No. Elements Activity ratio Degree of

inter-relationship 1 Market incentive 1.52 84 2 Awareness 1.29 135 3 Land ownership 2.02 43 4 Farm registration 0.68 101 5 Crop loss 2.01 85 6 Market

fluctuations 2.27

31

7 Social issues 0.93 159 8 Voluntary

scheme 0.23

68

9 Economic issues 0.68 124 10 Farmer disunity 0.93 160

90

180 Symptom Critical element

Buffer Motor

Deg

ree

of in

ter-

rela

tions

hip

Activity ratio 10

Land ownership

0 1

Market incentive

Social issues

Voluntary scheme

Farm registration

Market fluctuation

Economic issues Awareness

Crop loss

Farmer disunity

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3. ANALYSIS The following analysis considers the motor and critical elements that have pushed farmers to join or not to join NaCSA’s shrimp farmer societies in the three locations where the PSA focus groups were implemented.

3.1 Participating farmer groups All participating farmer groups could identify several motor elements: market incentive, quality seed, information sharing, government assistance and technical support. Market incentive was the common motor element identified by all three groups. This suggests that market incentive is the key factor for farmers to join the quality-led marketing chains, in this case, farmer societies. All the society farmers were aware of the fact that implementation of BMPs would lead to better market access. Some of the exporters have started offering to pay a premium price for the traceable, chemical-free, quality shrimp produced by society farmers. This was the common reason given by all participating farmers to join a society. The second motor element identified by participating groups is quality seed. Farmers in a society purchase quality seed in bulk through a contractual agreement with hatchery owners. This is made possible only through a group approach. Individual farmers may not be able to get good quality seed as they depend on local seed traders. This suggests that farmers consider quality seed as an important input for crop success. Another participating farmer group identified information sharing among society farmers as another motor element. This is one of the key factors in NaCSA societies where the farmers share information through regular meetings at the farm site. This helps them plan their crop and procure quality inputs. Government support is another motor element identified by the group in Karnataka. To promote adoption of BMPs and to motivate farmers to form groups, the government provided financial assistance to the societies to develop common infrastructure facilities like electricity, to deepen the intake and draining canals and to help set up a common laboratory for soil and water quality analysis. However, only one group identified government financial assistance as a motor element whereas the other two participating groups thought this was not an important criterion. The farmers’ explanation was that so far they had not availed of any assistance from the government and they thought the assistance could help them improve their infrastructure facilities. The two other groups had good infrastructure facilities of their own and financial assistance for them was not that important. The Karnataka participating farmers also identified technical support, which is mainly on-farm technical advisory services by NaCSA staff. This suggests that provision of good services is also an important element to motivate farmers to join a society. Two participating groups identified government recognition, cluster development, farmer unity and crop success as symptoms. This suggests that these elements could be the result of other elements rather than the drivers of change in the system. The common buffer element identified by all three groups was cost of production. This suggests that it is of low importance to participating farmers.

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3.2 Non-participating farmer groups All three non-participating farmer groups identified lack of market incentive as the key reason for not joining the quality-led market chains. This shows the lack of awareness among farmers who have not joined a society of the better market opportunities through implementation of BMPs in these societies. This study suggests that NaCSA needs to put more efforts to spread this information to farmers who have not yet joined societies, so that they can be motivated to join. Two groups of non-participating farmers identified land ownership as a motor element. This is considered an important issue by these two groups as there are more farmers with leased land compared with those who own land in these two groups in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Farm registration of own land gets done easily whereas holders of leased land have to get a five-year lease agreement from the original land owners if they want to be eligible for farm registration with the government. In many cases owners refuse to give a written lease agreement. Farm registration is mandatory for the farmers to join a society. There is an interesting response from three non-participating groups with respect to information. The Tamil Nadu group identified information as a motor element and a reason for not joining a society. This could be due to a communication gap between farmers and the NaCSA staff. Most farmers prompted about this said that they were not fully aware about NaCSA programmes. Despite many awareness programmes organized by the NaCSA staff in this same village, assembling all the farmers at any given time was difficult so the information had not reached all the farmers. Perhaps NaCSA should group the farmers into smaller units and organize separate awareness programmes. The non-participating farmers in Karnataka thought information was not an important factor. This is due to better awareness among farmers as more than 50 percent of the farmers in this village are participating in societies and have achieved better results for the past few years. The Karnataka non-participating group identified lack of coordination among stakeholders as one of the main reasons for not forming a society. When we asked farmers to elaborate on this their reasoning was that the stakeholders involved in the shrimp sector are not coordinated. Farmers felt that hatcheries, feed companies, processors, exporters and various governmental departments were not addressing the problems facing them like poor seed quality, high feed cost, low market price, or low awareness about government schemes. This was one of the reasons for this group of farmers not joining a society.

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4. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS The focus group discussions using the participatory systems analysis methodology with three groups of participating farmers and three groups of non-participating farmers has greatly helped NaCSA’s sustainable aquaculture work in India. It has enabled not only to identify strengths and weaknesses in the extension methodology and approach but also to prioritize them in order to plan the next stages of activities in a better way. In general, both the participating and non-participating groups of farmers seemed to be influenced to join or not to join the societies based on major issues such as market incentive, availability of information, disease prevalence and control, understanding of the advantages of farmer groups and assistance offered by the government. Lack of capital was an additional factor that was preventing farmers from participating in societies. Therefore to achieve the NaCSA objectives of sustainable farming and better linkage to markets, the following interventions can be prioritized:

• Market incentives (e.g. premium price for the quality produce, marketing agreement to ensure less price fluctuation during peak harvest season);

• Dissemination of success stories of societies to other non-participating farmers; • Improved information delivery system to farmers in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu States; • Addressing the registration problem of farmers leasing land; • Improving coordination among stakeholders involved in the sector to help farmers to procure

good-quality inputs and access bank finance when needed.

This would help increase farmer participation in quality-led marketing chains, in this case, through farmer societies. It is evident from the PSA results that the market incentive is the overriding driver which decides whether farmers join or do not join the quality-led marketing chains. NaCSA is focusing on this critical issue and working closely with local processors and quality-conscious buyers from abroad. Effectively engaging with the thousands of aquaculture producers in India and helping them to participate in quality-led marketing chains for sustainable development will not be a small task, but it is one that can only be achieved with the involvement and contribution of the many players involved in the supply chain. If the market recognition of society leads to a better incentive and better price for the farmers, this key motor element will motivate them to join a society and participate in quality-led marketing chains.

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