Establishing a Viable Value Chain in the Fisheries Sector — Challenges and Lessons Learnt

The fisheries sector has been declared as a sunrise sector, given its potential for employment generation, export earning and its role in the nutritional security of the country. The value chain in fisheries would ideally involve the primary producer, the processor and the marketing link before the fish comes to the consumer. As of now, there is very limited value addition in the chain and the product passes through the various stages of marketing in the domestic market and it reaches the consumer largely in the primary form. Changing consumer preferences, especially in the urban areas, have necessitated the introduction of the concept of value addition. The paper has presented the case of an intervention carried out in Chellanam fishing village in Kerala under the NAIP sub-project ‘Responsible Harvesting and Utilization of Selected Small Pelagics and Freshwater Fishes’. The intervention was the formation of post-harvest activity clusters of fisherwomen of the traditional marine fisheries sector, for operation and management of a community-based processing facility that would take up primary value addition of the small pelagic fish like sardine, mackerel and anchovies. The intervention is also aimed at empowering the fisherwomen in the area.