1. CSISA
Ben Belton
CSISA aquaculture
production economics and
poverty surveys

2. Introduction
• Three socioeconomic surveys
conducted under CSISA in 2012:
•Production economics
•Poverty
•Market prices

3. Production economics
• Aim: to understand the profitability, and
productivity of major aquaculture systems in
Bangladesh, and their place within the wider
household/farm economy (this is very poorly
documented for the vast majority of systems)
• Coverage: 3165 farm households in 6 hubs
districts, representing 14 distinct production
systems
• Duration: 5 months

4. Production economics
• Methodology:
– Rapid appraisal with key informants in each hub to
locate Unions with high concentrations of
aquaculture and identify main systems
– Field visits for ground truthing
– Select a cluster of 2-3 villages from each union
– Conduct interviews over 7 day period and attempt
to interview all households in the cluster (aim for
minimum 100 interviews)

5. Production economics
• Current status:
– Data entered, cleaned and under analysis
• Expected outputs:
– Summary review of aquaculture systems in
Bangladesh
– Related papers

6. Poverty Survey
• Aim: to better understand relationship
between commercial aquaculture
development and employment, local
economic growth and poverty reduction
(interested in effects on broader
community, not just producers)
• Coverage: 681 households in 9 communities
from 3 hubs, representing 6 major systems of
aquaculture

7. Poverty Survey
• Methodology:
– Villages selected as subset of production
economics survey to allow for comparisons
– Household census conducted in each village
– Population stratified by landholding size and
households selected proportionally
– Approximately half the households in each
community interviewed (sufficient to ensure ≈5%
confidence interval) using household survey based
on IFPRI design

8. Poverty Survey
• Current status:
– Data entered, cleaned and under analysis
• Expected outputs:
– Summary report and related papers

9. Market Price Survey
• Aim: to track weekly prices for major farmed
and wild fish species at urban and rural
wholesale and retain markets in CSISA hubs
and disseminate the information to hub
managers and other users
• Coverage: 40 markets (9 urban retail, 11 urban
wholesale, 9 rural retail, 11 rural wholesale)
• Duration: October 2011 - present

10. Market Price Survey
• Methodology
– Identify major rural and urban wholesale and
retail fish markets in each hub
– Recruit a worker in each market to record fish
price data on a weekly basis
– Collect data from each market on monthly basis,
enter by smartphone and remotely upload to
customized database
– Circulate price database to hub managers and key
staff by 20th of each month