Exploring traceability in small-scale fisheries: from harvest to landing

Abstract

As consumers and governments demand to know the origins of seafood products, there is a push for transparency across the seafood supply chain. However, for many small-scale fisheries (SSF), this growing demand for transparency is also serving as a barrier to markets and additional financial burdens as they are increasingly required to demonstrate traceability in their operations at sea. Through a literature review, this study outlines global traceability requirements from point of harvest to landing, including legal and recommended key data elements from large seafood importing markets. Overall, reporting requirements varied between countries at different stages along the supply chain. The study identifies some of the challenges faced by SSF in adopting traceability systems including cost, data sharing and privacy concerns, infrastructure limitations, poor governance and lack of incentives. With this information, an evaluation framework was developed as a tool for SSF to identify traceability systems appropriate for data collection and reporting at sea. Through a case study on Indonesian small-scale tuna fisheries, the framework evaluates three traceability tools. Well-implemented, traceability systems provide an opportunity for SSF to demonstrate their sustainability commitments and obtain a higher market price for their products. Highlighting the benefits of electronic traceability systems and developing appropriate incentives is key to increasing the adoption of traceability tools in SSF globally. Keywords: traceability, small-scale fisheries, Indonesia, traceability technologies, reporting requirements, IUU fishing