World Food Policy Volume/Issue 2-2/3-1 Fall 2015/Spring 2016 | Page 47

World Food Policy

Conclusion

Thailand to meet consumer demand. The
Shop would also do well to consider what
kinds of value-added products make sense
from a time and economic perspective.
Fishers, their families, or members of
their community could do more of this
processing, as evidence shows that the
Shop is able to make significant revenue
by buying and selling these already
processed seafood products. Given the
large volume of unprocessed local fish
the Shop sold in Year 1, and the decent
profits that ensued, there are also clear
advantages to promoting this side of the
business. An active education campaign
could help raise consumer awareness of
the benefits of “going local.”

What has been found with
organic and related foods is that branded
products in supermarkets enables
access to middle-class consumers who
are willing to pay premiums (Ponte
2016): our article explores if this can be
leveraged for sustainable seafood as well.
Our insights suggest that this might be the
case in Thailand, although time will tell.
Questions to consider include assessing
whether consumer purchasing behavior
in the general public would reproduce
a merging of social and environmental
concerns, and whether the general Thai
public is even thinking about sustainable,
local seafood. Certainly the Shop offers a
seafood product that is in stark contrast to
the labor abuse and ecological challenges
facing the off-shore sector (Marschke and
Vandergeest 2016). The Shop initiative,
although unintended, is quite timely
in this sense. As such, there are many
reasons to be cautiously optimistic about
this approach to creating an alternative
market for seafood caught by small-scale
fishers that supports local sustainability.

T

he Fisherfolk Shop is an example
of an initiative designed to support
local seafood. Small-scale fishers
are encouraged to fish (or continue
fishing) in ecologically sustainable
ways, with the Shop connecting this
seafood caught with consumers who
want to support such practices through
purchasing power (Olson, Clay, and Pinto
da Silva 2014). By creating an emerging
niche market, the Shop can pay smallscale fishers a premium for their seafood,
offering more than an average MP. The
Shop relies on short value chains and
relatively wealthy, urban consumers in
Bangkok who are willing to pay more for
sustainable seafood to sustain this model.
Consumers are found to be motivated by
health and food safety when it comes to
supporting sustainable seafood, but there
is clearly a concern for other ethical issues
like social justice and ecological health.
Among consumers purchasing from the
Shop, there is a substantial amount of
support for such a sustainable seafood
initiative.

What an analysis of Year 1 of
the Shop’s operations suggests is that
there is an urban market for seafood
caught by small-scale fishers in Prachuap
Khiri Khan province. Top Shop revenue
generators include mackerel (IndoPacific king mackerel and short-bodied
mackerel), blue swimming crab, and
banana shrimp—all local species. From
a revenue generating and labor-savings
perspective, the Shop could benefit
greatly from concentrating its’ efforts
on processing and marketing these local
species rather than purchasing small
amounts of seafood from southern
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