A fishery value chain refers to the full range of activities that are required to bring fish from capture, through the intermediary phases of landing, processing, transporting and delivery to final consumers, and final disposal after use2. Depending on factors such as the species harvested, post-harvesting methods adopted, consumer preferences and economic benefits, there may exist a number of fishery value chains in an area, their reach extending from the local to the district, national, regional or international markets. The length of a value chain may be long and involve a number of intermediate stages, each requiring a specific set of actions and actors, skills and institutional arrangements, and physical infrastructure and financial investments.

In the developing countries, small scale fishers - both men and women - are widely represented at almost every level of a fishery value chain: as producers, processors, traders, ancillary workers and – of equal importance - as consumers. A number of factors – access to fish and fishing grounds, market arrangements, policy environment, power & patronage relationships, and social equity and development context etc – contribute to wide disparities in terms of the availability of, and access to, the necessary resources for the small scale fisheries (SSF) actors at different stages in a fishery value chain, influencing the extent to which they can benefit from their activities and actions.

Focusing on the SSF actors in the fishery value chains is obviously important to secure their rights to sustainable and equitable livelihoods and to enable them to obtain better incomes and working conditions. An equally important consideration is the critical direct role they play in various stages of the fishery value chains, which has significant ecological, economic and food security implications for the society at large