Reimagining aquaculture risk management beyond the farm

Summary:

The aquaculture sector provides more than half the seafood available for human consumption. As the sector grows, so do the risks associated with production and these transcend farm boundaries. Reflecting a trend observed in other agro-food industries, management and assurance approaches that address aquaculture risks beyond the unit of production are emerging. However, we lack an understanding of how they address risk-sharing through collaboration between actors across landscapes. This thesis explores what aquaculture risk management beyond the farm is, and in what ways this is institutionalized in the Asian aquaculture sector. I offer a series of social science insights that underpin a fundamentally new way of understanding beyond farm risk management, conceptualizing it as the intersection between space, risk and institutionalization, and reveal the inherently social nature of aquaculture risk management beyond the farm. Based on these insights I classify existing approaches to beyond farm risk management and present a novel way of governing risks beyond the farm that enables scaling-up sustainable food production across landscapes and in markets.