Where Shrimp Eat Better Than People: Globalized Fisheries, Nutritional Unequal Exchange and Asian Hunger (Studies in Political Economy of Global Labor and Work, 2)

East, South and Southeast Asia are home to two-thirds of the world?s hungry people, but they produce more than three-quarters of the world?s fish and nearly half of other foods. Through integration into the world food system, these Asian fisheries export their most nutritious foods and import less healthy substitutes. Worldwide, their exports sell cheap because women, the hungriest Asians, provide unpaid subsidies to production processes. In the 21st century, Asian peasants produce more than 60 percent of the regional food supply, but their survival is threatened by hunger, public depreasantization policies, climate change, land grabbing, urbanization and debt bondage. 00Also available in Open Access Contents 6 Acknowledgments 9 Tables and Figures 10 Tables 10 Figures 11 Abbreviations 12 Introduction 14 1 Scholarly Significance and Investigative Goals 17 1.1 The World Food System and Southern Hunger 19 1.2 The Global Significance of the Asian Fisheries 22 1.3 Hunger and Depeasantization 23 1.4 The Importance of Gendered Analysis 25 2 Methods of Inquiry and Areas of Study 26 2.1 Target Study Areas 27 2.2 Statistical and Archival Sources 30 2.3 Methodological Flaws in Databases 32 2.4 Ethnographic Field Research 32 2.5 Gleaning Philippine Scholarship 36 3 What Do We Promise Readers Conceptually? 37 4 Organization of the Book 40 1 The Asian Fishery Crisis, Nutritional Unequal Exchange and Food Insecurity 44 1 Trends in Asian Fishery Production and Nutritional Shortfalls 46 1.1 Child Food Insecurity 52 1.2 Iron Deficiency Anemia 52 1.3 Asian Fishery Production and Nutritional Trends 53 2 Investigative Questions 54 3 Conflict between Food Security and Food/Fishery Exporting 54 3.1 Fishery Exporting 55 3.2 Threats to Asian Agricultural Production 56 3.3 Centrality of Fishery Outputs to Asian Nutrition 57 4 Dependence on Imports as Threat to Food Security 60 4.1 How Is the Food Import Budget Spent? 64 4.2 Nutritional Unequal Exchanges through Food Exports and Imports 67 4.3 Do Farm Outputs Offset Fishery Nutritional Shortfalls Caused by Exporting? 73 4.3 Growing Dependency on Wheat, Soy and Processed Foods 75 4.4 Imported Production Inputs for Export Commodities 78 4.5 Impacts of Food Imports on Agricultural Production 82 5 Nonfoods and Asian Food Security 84 6 Will Aquaculture Solve Asian Protein and Iron Shortfalls? 88 7 Food Security and Pressures toward Depeasantization 90 7.1 Land and Waterway Dispossession 91 8 Ecological Degradation of Asian Fisheries and Food Insecurity 92 9 Intra-national Inequalities in Food Access 96 10 Impacts of Wastage on Food Security 100 11 Looking to Future Chapters 102 2 Debt, Resource Exploitation and Integration into the World Agro-Food System 103 1 The Role of External Development Agencies 105 2 Philippine Elites and Economic Restructuring 106 3 Government Promotion of Agricultural Exports 107 4 Government Promotion of Capture Fishing for Export 112 5 Government Promotion of Acquaculture for Export 115 5.1 The Boom in Monocultural Ponds for World Markets, 1975–1980s 116 5.2 Trade Crisis of the 1990s 119 5.3 Aggressive Aquaculture Promotion since 2000 120 5.4 Seaweed Farming 127 6 Ecological Impacts of the Philippine Agro-Industrial Export Strategy 128 6.1 Land and Forest Degradation 129 6.2 Degradation Caused by Capture Fishing 130 6.3 Degradation Caused by Aquaculture 131 7 Looking to the Future 134 3 Globalized Food and Asian Hunger 137 1 Privileging Exports over Local Consumption 140 1.1 Privileging Exports over Crops for Local Consumption 141 1.2 Privileging Export Seafoods over Local Consumption 148 2 Import Dependence and Risks to Food Security 149 2.1 Dependence on Imported Agricultural and Aquaculture Inputs 150 2.2 Meeting WTO Import Requirements 154 2.3 Dependence on Imported Processed Foods 155 2.4 Integration of Imported Processed Foods into Public Nutrition Policy 158 2.5 Corporate Market Targeting of Philippine Children 161 3 Transformation of Foods into Nonfoods 164 4 Class Polarization and Inequalities in Food Access 167 5 Looking to the Future 170 5.1 Future Export and Nonfood Strategies 171 5.2 The Risk of Food Import Dependency 173 5.3 Ecological Degradation and Food Security 175 5.4 Outlook for Future Food Security 177 4 Commodity-Chained Peasants 179 1 Transformation of Panguil Bay Agriculture 181 1.1 Declining Cultivation of Cereals 182 1.2 Prioritizing Commercial Export Crops 184 2 Transformation of Capture Fishing 188 2.1 Traditional Peasant Capture Fishing 188 2.2 Depeasantization of Capture Fishing 191 3 Transformation and Expansion of Aquaculture 193 3.1 National Trade Crisis and Regional Expansion of the 1990s 194 3.2 Aggressive Aquaculture Promotion Since 2000 196 4 Integrating the Panguil Bay Fishery into National and Global Commodity Chains 200 4.1 Export Functions of the Panguil Bay Region 200 4.2 The Spatial Articulation of the Region’s External Trade 201 4.3 The Crustacean Commodity Chain 202 4.4 The Finfish Commodity Chain 204 4.5 The Live Reef Fish Commodity Chain 207 5 Is Philippine Fish Marketing Culturally Unique? 209 5.1 The Philippine Suki Tradition 210 5.2 Parallels in Other Countries 211 6 Ecological Impacts of Global Integration 212 7 Food Insecurity in Panguil Bay Communities 216 7.1 Declining Local Consumption 217 7.2 Conversion of Nutrients to Nonfoods 218 8 Looking to the Future 220 5 The World Does Not Weep for Us 222 1 Hidden Household Subsidies to Export Commodity Chains 223 2 Conceptualizing Capitalist Externalization of Costs to Households 228 3 Externalization of Costs to Peasant Fishing Communities 229 4 Pressures to Depeasantize Panguil Bay 232 4.1 Public Policy Formation 233 4.2 Constraints on Peasant Access to Ecological Resources 240 5 Debt Bondage as Externalized Cost 245 5.1 Historical Structuring of Peasant Fisher Debt Bondage 245 5.2 Contemporary Credit and Finance Mechanisms 248 5.3 Sharecropping and Contract Farming 250 6 Threats to Peasant Livelihoods 252 6.1 Declining Fish Catches 253 6.2 Declining Income 253 6.3 Failure of Alternative Livelihood Strategies 255 7 Alteration and Intensification of Women’s Work 256 7.1 Women’s Altered Work Roles and Household Survival 257 7.3 Fish Marketing and Female Disempowerment 262 8 “The Shrimp Live Better Than We Do”: Threats to Human Survival 264 8.1 Threats to Health 265 8.2 Loss of Social Services 267 8.3 Threats to Local Food Security 269 9 Looking to the Future 272 6 Endlessly Toiling 273 1 Conceptualizing the Semiproletarian Portfolio of Diverse Labors 274 1.1 Women’s Unpaid Household Labor 276 1.2 Export Production Other Than Fishing 281 1.3 Paid Labors in Putting Out Systems Other Than Fishing 283 1.4 Informal Sector Marketing 288 1.5 Wage Earning 291 2 Inequitable Management of Scarce Labor Time 294 2.1 Self-exploitation by Household Members 295 2.2 Inequitable Work Time Allocation 297 3 Arrangement of Household Credit 299 4 Restructuring Household Boundaries 300 4.1 Changing Fisher Household Composition 300 4.2 Inter-household Networking 301 5 Inequitable Pooling and Allocation of Household Resources 303 5.1 Inequitable Distribution of Resources 304 5.3 Self Deprivation to Survive Household Shortfalls 307 6 Conflict over Household Budget Management 310 7 Looking to the Future 315 7 Climate Change, Land Grabbing and the Future of Asian Food Security 316 1 Climate Change, Peasant Persistence and Asian Food Security 317 1.1 Climate Risks Facing the Asian Fisheries 318 1.2 Climate Migration in the Asian Fisheries 320 1.3 CO2 Emissions of the Asian Fisheries 321 1.4 Climate Emission Reduction and REDD Projects 322 1.5 Climate Adaptation Projects 331 2 Land Grabbing and Asian Food Security 335 2.1 National Land Displacements for Nonagricultural Development 336 2.2 Impacts of Transnational Land Grabbing 353 3 Conclusion 359 8 Propping Up the World Food System 363 1 Looking toward the Future of Asian Food Insecurity 365 1.1 The Absence of Asian State Food Security Policy 369 1.2 World Food System Risks Made Visible by COVID-19 369 2 Peasant Contributions to Asian Food Security 372 3 Will There Be an Historical Transition to Large Asian Farms? 375 4 Deruralization, Occupational Multiplicity and Asian Peasant Persistence 381 4.1 Deruralization of the Asian Fisheries? 383 4.2 Peri-urbanization in the Asian Fisheries 384 5 Asian Debt Bondage and the World Food System 386 5.1 Agricultural Debt Bondage 388 5.2 Debt Bondage in the Asian Fishing Industry 389 5.3 Asian Climate Change and Debt Bondage 393 6 Will Asian Peasants Persist in the 21st Century? 395 6.1 Why Peasant Farmers are Essential to Capitalism 396 6.2 The Persistence of Asian Peasant Fishers 398 7 Conclusion: Seeing Hunger through the Fisherwoman’s Lens 401 Bibliography 403 Index 450 "East, South and Southeast Asia are home to two-thirds of the world's hungry people, but they produce more than three-quarters of the world's fish and nearly half of other foods. Through integration into the world food system, these Asian fisheries export their most nutritious foods and import less healthy substitutes. Worldwide, their exports sell cheap because women, the hungriest Asians, provide unpaid subsidies to production processes. In the 21st century, Asian peasants produce more than 60 percent of the regional food supply, but their survival is threatened by hunger, public depreasantization policies, climate change, land grabbing, urbanization and debt bondage"-- Provided by publisher