Bartkus, Viva and Brooks, Wyatt and Kaboski, Joseph and Pelnik, Carolyn (2023) Fishing communities in Brazil overcame middlemen to break a poverty trap.
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Remote fishing communities in Brazil received low prices for their fish, were unable to afford productive investments, and therefore remained in poverty. By collectively purchasing boats they overcame the market power of intermediaries and broke the cycle of poverty. Remote communities, such as those in rainforests and high-altitude mountains, have limited access to outside markets, since the costs of transporting goods produced in such places are very high. In addition to the actual costs of transport, this remoteness often means that few middlemen find it profitable to make such long and expensive journeys, allowing a limited number of middlemen to exert strong market power and offer low prices to remote communities for the goods they sell. Limited market access and intermediary market power contribute to the persistent problems of poverty with which remote areas of the world contend (Asher and Novosad 2020, Asturias et al. 2019, Bergquist and Dinerstein 2020, Grant and Startz 2022). In our research (Bartkus et al. 2022), we examine these issues in the Brazilian Amazon. We study a programme to purchase boats so that communities can directly deliver fish to distant markets and bypass middlemen. This is achieved by our NGO partner, Fundacao Amazonas Sustentavel (FAS), who organises communities and provides up-front financing (later repaid by the communities) to collectively purchase the boats. This initiative led to an income gain of 27% over comparison communities, largely through an increase in the price per kilogram of fish paid by buyers to community fishermen. The cost-benefit analysis on the initiative showed a payback on the investment in boats within three fishing seasons, well within the life of a typical boat (20-30 years) on the Amazon River.
| Item Type: | Articles |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | Fishing Communities, Brazil, Poverty, Value Chain, Livelihoods, Fishing Boats, Amazon River, Fishermen |
| Subjects: | Right to Resources |
| Depositing User: | Kokila ICSF Krish |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Mar 2025 12:02 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Mar 2025 12:02 |
| URI: | http://icsfarchives.net/id/eprint/21080 |
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