Before the fishmeal factory wins the auction

A factory buying fish can offer a landing site a welcome new customer. It can also change who is able to buy the catch. Any serious assessment of fishmeal investment has to examine both effects before projected export earnings settle the argument.

The question is especially important for small fish that can be sold as food. Industrial processing does not become undesirable simply because its output is exported. But a development policy should identify whether a new buyer is using material with little other market or outbidding the people supplying affordable food.

The Food and Agriculture Organization's 2022 fisheries assessment explains an important distinction. Fishmeal and fish oil can be made from whole fish or from processing by-products. It also identifies concerns in parts of West Africa where more catch has been diverted to export-oriented fishmeal production, with implications for food security and livelihoods.

Those are regional concerns, rather than proof that every Ghanaian investment has produced the same effect. They are a reason to ask a better set of questions when proposals are assessed.

What will the plant buy? The answer should identify species, expected volumes, sources and the intended share of whole fish and genuine processing residues. A general promise to use 'waste' is too imprecise. Material that is currently sold cheaply as food may have a modest commercial price while still having substantial value to the households buying it.

The next question concerns the other buyers. Fishers may benefit from a higher landing price while traders, processors and consumers face a more difficult market. These groups cannot be treated as a single category of beneficiaries. Public consultation should include the people who handle and sell the fish after it reaches shore.

A FAO workshop held in Accra in December 2023 examined how small pelagic fisheries can support nutrition and livelihoods alongside a responsible fishmeal and fish-oil industry. That framing is useful: investment choices should account for the whole food system, rather than ask whether a factory is simply for or against development.

An assessment could compare the proposed purchase volumes with the quantities reaching food markets, identify seasonal pressure and examine how prices change. It should include enough local evidence to show where an industrial buyer would enter the chain. A national production total may conceal a much tighter market at a particular landing site.

The distinction between whole fish and by-products also needs continuing verification. If approval is justified on the basis of processing residues, inspectors should be able to examine purchasing records and material entering the plant. A condition that cannot be checked is unlikely to protect a competing food use.

There is a reasonable counterargument. Industrial buyers can create work, improve market reliability and make use of material that would otherwise spoil. A restriction that ignores those benefits could leave fishers with fewer options and waste a useful resource. The response should be to test the claimed benefits and establish their conditions.

For example, investment in handling and preservation may allow more of a catch to reach food markets in usable condition. A factory using legitimate residues can complement that improvement. A model whose profitability depends on buying edible fish cheaply deserves a different assessment.

FAO's small-scale fisheries guidance on food security and nutrition provides a further principle: decisions about fisheries should account for their contribution to people's food and livelihoods. That gives governments a basis for weighing effects that a private investment forecast may omit.

Conditions should be reviewable. If sourcing changes, local availability deteriorates or the promised processing benefits do not emerge, the responsible agencies need an agreed procedure for investigating and responding. Publishing an initial approval and then abandoning the underlying assumptions would leave the public interest dependent on a forecast.

The state should not try to decide every sale at the landing site. It should establish what public benefits justify investment support and what evidence will show whether those benefits endure.

A new buyer's offer can be good news for a fisher. The development test begins by following the same fish through the other lives it could support. Export earnings belong in that calculation, alongside the people who need an affordable meal.

Swaansh Mahat is an independent writer and English-language educator based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He writes about education, public services and everyday institutional life.