Graduation Year
2025
Date of Submission
4-2025
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
International Relations
Reader 1
William Ascher
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2025 Sasha Shunko
Abstract
This thesis explores the barriers and opportunities facing smallholder aquaculture farmers in Southeast Asia, focusing on Thailand. It examines how certification systems, technical assistance, and policy interventions can effectively include smallholders in development and sustainability efforts. Based on field interviews with Thai shrimp farmers, analysis of certification schemes, and review of other agricultural intervention models, the research traces how market access, corporate concentration, and environmental change shape smallholder livelihoods.
The findings show that while certification is promoted as a tool for sustainability and market integration, in practice it often excludes the very farmers it seeks to empower. Redundant standards, limited price premiums, and administrative burdens disproportionately impact smallholders, reinforcing structural inequalities. Farmer cooperatives and informal peer networks emerge as critical sources of resilience, enabling knowledge-sharing, collective adaptation to disease, and shared investment in technology and practices. Approaches to technical assistance and risk mitigation must work alongside these cooperatives.
The findings recommend tiered certification pathways, peer-led extension models, cooperative purchasing systems, and climate-adaptive community strategies to mitigate adverse effects of climate change on aquaculture. Building inclusive systems is essential to support farmers’ livelihoods and secure the long-term sustainability of global aquaculture supply chains.
Recommended Citation
Shunko, Sasha, "Beyond Teaching a Man to Fish: Smallholder Cultivation, Certification, and Cooperation in Southeast Asian Aquaculture" (2025). CMC Senior Theses. 3886.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/3886
