WWW.WAS.ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • MARCH 2013 31 discrimination along the shrimp supply-chain, with women getting only about 60 percent of the wages men earn (Steinberg 2012, USAID Bangladesh 2006), particularly in processing plants where 60-80 percent of workers are women (Ahmed et al. 2007). Farming, selling and auctioning is almost exclusively dominated by men. Another important social impact has been on food security in shrimp farming districts. The landless and small-scale farmers are also worst affected in this respect, with increased soil salinity crippling rice, vegetable and fruit production, and rivers and homestead ponds emptying of fish. These people become dependent on purchased food from local markets but do not always have the money to do so. This also leads to changes in social interactions because, in Bangladesh, the ability to present food as gifts to guests, friends and relatives is considered very important. Compared to the time when southwest Bangladesh was covered with rice fields, now only richer farmers have rice land, meaning many poor are no longer self-sufficient. Although shrimp farming has generally improved living conditions of small-scale farmers, most are faced with daily uncertainty about when and how much they will be paid for their shrimp. In Bangladesh there is a dependence on middlemen who purchase shrimp from farmers and deliver them to depots and processing plants. While this provides jobs for workers in the supply chain, it can see farmers driven to the brink of bankruptcy. The price farmers get from middlemen fluctuates greatly and can be significantly reduced once the middleman has taken his fee. In addition, farmers rarely receive payment directly, usually waiting from two weeks to three months to be paid, if they are paid at all. Some poorer farmers take out loans merely to survive while waiting for payments that are late or never come. Finally working conditions on farms and in processing plants have been criticized in the past due to long working hours, lack of contracts, poor housing, child labor, and an unhealthy working environment. Although the Bangladesh government has set minimum wages for workers in shrimp processing, a study by SAFE (2012) discovered in interviews with 700 processing plant workers in 2010 that nearly 25 percent of permanent workers and 75 percent of contract workers did not get those minimum wages. Moreover, 96 percent of respondents reported that children between 14-18 years were working in their plants (SAFE 2012). However, it is important to remember that poor working conditions are endemic to most industries in Bangladesh (including the garment industry, for example; see Paul-Majumder et al. 2000, Absar 2001) and a concerted national effort is required to combat this. What is a Sustainable and Ethical Future for Bangladeshi Shrimp Farming Communities? Considering the positive and negative aspects of the Bangladeshi shrimp sector, what can be said of its sustainability? Although nobody claims it to be perfect, some European nongovernmental organizations have been very quick to condemn the sector as completely unsustainable and have urged European consumers to boycott Bangladeshi shrimp, even if it is produced organically. However, sustainability is not universal; it means different things to different people in different contexts. To responsibly consider the sustainability of Bangladeshi shrimp is to consider all the different ideas on what this means and then weigh them in a difficult balancing act. We can in this way ask, whose sustainability counts? The voices rarely heard are those of the Bangladeshi people producing shrimp and from members of nearby communities. Shrimp farmers and others in communities rarely mention the environmental and social impacts of shrimp farming. From the perspective of the poor farmer, the most important thing is to have something to eat every day and the security that this does not change suddenly. For them, sustainability means receiving a stable long-term income. Moreover, shrimp farmers perceive that shrimp farming has contributed to improvements in local infrastructure, such as roads, markets and schools, and more farmers have been able to afford the costs of educating their children. This has to be seen in the context of general developments and political programs in Bangladesh. Shrimp farming was promoted by the government in the past but now represents a local adaptation of farmers to a changing environment. In the increasingly saline, lowland soils, rice farming is no longer (CONTINUED ON PAGE 32) FIGURE 3. “Greened” dikes with neem and mangrove trees at the organic shrimp farming area. FIGURE 4. An organic shrimp farmer’s wife showing the farmer’s identification and farm information.
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