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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

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Eliot Jones-Garcia

Eliot Jones-Garcia is a Senior Research Analyst with the Natural Resources and Resilience Unit based in Washington, DC. His research focuses on human-AI interaction, user-centered design, and the ethical and responsible development of AI. Eliot is currently finalizing a PhD on the digitalization of agricultural advisory services at Wageningen University & Research.

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Markets, Trade, and Institutions

Abdul Zabbar Sakil

Research Analyst

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Bio

Abdul Zabbar Sakil is a Research Analyst in the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit, based in Dhaka. Sakil has expertise in handling large-scale, intricate survey data; survey management and questionnaire development; and in evaluating government policies. His research interests focus on food security, poverty, and labor economics.

Before joining IFPRI, he served as a research associate at the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling, a think tank in Dhaka. Sakil has previously been involved in projects related to child protection, PKA and household surveys, government policy reviews, and energy market economics. Sakil obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from the University of Dhaka.

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Publications

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Brief

Life after a cluster intervention: Insights from shrimp farming in Bangladesh

2025Narayanan, Sudha; Sakil, Abdul Zabbar; Kabir, Razin; Redoy, Md.; Belton, Ben
Details

Life after a cluster intervention: Insights from shrimp farming in Bangladesh

This project note summarizes insights from a three-year research project focused on an ambitious cluster intervention by the Department of Fisheries (DoF), Government of Bangladesh for shrimp farmers. In 2022, as part of a World Bank funded project, the Department of Fisheries organized smallholder shrimp farmers with contiguous ponds into clusters in Khulna, Satkhira and Bagerhat districts in southwest Bangladesh. Each cluster brought together 20-25 farmers, with pond sizes of at most 1.5 acres in size, to deliver training on best management practices, supply inputs, and encourage coordination. Group members were encouraged to follow a suite of management practices aimed at raising farm productivity, reducing the incidence of shrimp disease, and increasing the supply of raw material for processors. These measures included farming bagda shrimp (P. monodon)—Bangladesh’s main export species—in monoculture, raising shrimp stocking densities, stocking disease-free shrimp larvae (SPFPL), using factory-made feeds, deepening ponds, erecting biosecurity fencing, and coordinating stocking and harvesting activities with other group members. The costs of deepening ponds and adopting other improved management practices were borne by farmers themselves, but the clusters that made these investments received free SPF-PL and feed as incentives for doing so. The goal of this cluster intervention was to promote sufficient volumes of shrimp for processing plants for export, eventually paving the way for instituting traceability systems and group-based sustainability certification, increasingly a requirement in global retail markets. Even at the time of inception, the cluster program was intended as a time-bound two-year project that would end in 2025.

Year published

2025

Authors

Narayanan, Sudha; Sakil, Abdul Zabbar; Kabir, Razin; Redoy, Md.; Belton, Ben

Citation

Narayanan, Sudha; Sakil, Abdul Zabbar; Kabir, Razin; Redoy, Md.; and Belton, Ben. 2025. Life after a cluster intervention: Insights from shrimp farming in Bangladesh. IFPRI Project Note. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/179366

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Southern Asia; Asia; Shrimp Fisheries; Evaluation; Shrimp Culture; Farming Systems; Aquaculture Systems

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Brief

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Brief

Clustering shrimp farms in Bangladesh: A novel effort with mixed outcomes

2025Kabir, Razin; Belton, Ben; Narayanan, Sudha; Sakil, Abdul Zabbar; Khan, Asraul Hoque; Hernandez, Ricardo
Details

Clustering shrimp farms in Bangladesh: A novel effort with mixed outcomes

Organizing smallholder farmers in clusters has been widely promoted as a way to boost agricultural productivity, streamline delivery of extension services, and improve access to markets. In Bangladesh, where shrimp is an important export crop produced largely by smallholders, government and industry view clustering as key to preventing Bangladesh being left behind in an increasingly competitive global market. Bangladesh’s shrimp exports are highly dependent on the hotel, restaurant, and catering (HoReCa) sector in Europe—a small and relatively low value market segment. Gaining access to the much larger and potentially more lucrative retail market segment in Europe and North America requires high quality, traceable, and – increasingly – certified, shrimp, posing a challenging for Bangladesh.

Year published

2025

Authors

Kabir, Razin; Belton, Ben; Narayanan, Sudha; Sakil, Abdul Zabbar; Khan, Asraul Hoque; Hernandez, Ricardo

Citation

Kabir, Razin; Belton, Ben; Narayanan, Sudha; Sakil, Abdul Zabbar; Khan, Asraul Hoque; and Hernandez, Ricardo. 2025. Clustering shrimp farms in Bangladesh: A novel effort with mixed outcomes. South Asia Policy Perspectives 4. New Delhi, India: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/174761

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Smallholders; Agricultural Productivity; Markets; Extension Systems; Shrimp Culture; Exports

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Brief

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Report

The cluster panacea? An evaluation of three interventions in shrimp value chains in Bangladesh

2024Narayanan, Sudha; Belton, Ben; Kabir, Razin; Sakil, Abdul Zabbar; Khan, Asraul Hoque; Hernandez, Ricardo
Details

The cluster panacea? An evaluation of three interventions in shrimp value chains in Bangladesh

Clustering farming has often been proposed as an effective way to overcome the significant transactions costs faced by downstream buyers in interacting and negotiating with many small farmers, while making it easier for extension workers and governments to dispense advice, provide upstream services and inputs. In this study, we evaluate the impact of a set of three initiatives in Bangladesh, implemented by a government department, a private sector processing firm and a not-for-profit industrial advocacy body, all involving clustering contiguous shrimp farm ponds to enable group certification necessary for global market access. We implement a canonical difference-in-differences model using two rounds of surveys of a sample of over 1,222 farmers in 2023 and 2024 to assess the impacts on pond management practices, net profits and any unintended impacts on food security and dietary diversity. Our results suggest that the cluster interventions had impressive impacts on adoption of better farm management practices. However, these do not appear to translate into significant gains in net profits, perhaps because these interventions are still relatively new. Further, it appears that cluster farmers pay a penalty on account of a shift to more intensive cultivation, represented by a loss in species diversity and lower incomes from fish and vegetables. We find that there are no significant spillover effects as yet on shrimp farmers in the same village as the clusters. This study reflects critically on the efficacy of clustering that is presumed to enhance access to global markets.

Year published

2024

Authors

Narayanan, Sudha; Belton, Ben; Kabir, Razin; Sakil, Abdul Zabbar; Khan, Asraul Hoque; Hernandez, Ricardo

Citation

Narayanan, Sudha; Belton, Ben; Kabir, Razin; Sakil, Abdul Zabbar; Khan, Asraul Hoque; and Hernandez, Ricardo. 2024. The cluster panacea? An evaluation of three interventions in shrimp value chains in Bangladesh. CGIAR Initiative on Rethinking Food Markets Technical Report. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/172964

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Transaction Costs; Farmers; Shrimp Culture; Food Security; Profit

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Report