1. INTRODUCTION

Seafood products are among the most important internationally traded food commodities. In 2000 the value of international fish trade was about US$61 billion, while the total value of all agricultural trade was US$431 billion (Anderson, 2003). The welfare effect for society from free trade is well known and several authors have shown that this also applies to trade in natural resources. However, the results are often specific to the resource itself and the structure of the economy (Hannesson, 2000). The rapid increase in seafood trade over the past decades and the fact that most of the trade is exports from developing countries to the more developed countries has led to increasing concerns over the effects of trade on sustainability of fisheries and the distribution of benefits from these trade activities to the primary sectors.^[1]

Though the theoretical background of international trade is well known the research conducted so far has offered limited insights into how seafood value (or price) is actually distributed over the chain of production, processing and marketing of seafood products.^[2] This report takes the first steps to analyse seafood value chains, with the initial objective of evaluating the value added processes at each level. For this purpose four different fisheries in four different countries have been examined.

Analysis of value chains requires micro level data, which proved difficult to obtain since most of the data consistently collected by government and international agencies is collected at aggregated levels. It proved to be especially difficult at the retail level since most retail data is collected and commercialized by private companies. Despite difficulties in acquiring the retail data the analysis gives valuable insights into seafood value-chains. Value chains for pelagic fisheries were shown to have similar characteristics to value chains for highly processed agricultural products while demersal species were more in line with value chains for other protein sources, i.e. beef, pork and poultry. However, there were substantial differences with demersal fish when compared with value chains for meat, emphasizing that despite these products often being regarded as substitutes for oneanother there are different economic forces behind their supply. An important point that emerged was that producers in developed countries seemed to have control over a bigger portion of the value chain, possibly giving them a better competitive advantage in international seafood markets.

A lesson from this analysis is that the focus should not be on the relative value which each segment receives but rather on the operating margins in the overall value chains and the level of transparency and information flow between market levels.

The report is organized into five sections. Section 2 gives an overview of seafood trade (and the theory of international trade with respect to fisheries). It also considers the relevance of international trade to management of fishery resources and emphasizes its importance in today’s seafood business. Section 3 gives an overview of the methodology used in this report. Section 4 includes the case studies for the four different fisheries, where each fishery is analysed with regard to cost items within each segment of the value chain. Section 5 focuses on cross-comparison between the different fisheries and section 6 contains discussion and concluding remarks.

Several individuals have provided research assistance and written sections in this report. The authors thank Max Nielsen for his contribution to the Danish case, Geofrey F. Nanyaro for his contribution to this project with regard to the Tanzanian case study, Lahsen Ababouch and Ahmed Chaïbi for their contribution with regard to the Moroccan anchovy case study. They also thank staff members of FAO, specifically Grimur Valdimarsson, Lahsen Ababouch and Helga Josupeit for their valuable input and comments, and not least patience.