Fish and fishery products are among the most traded food commodities worldwide. Sustained demands, trade liberalization policies, globalization of food systems, and technological innovations have furthered the overall increase in international fish trade. As a result of globalization and liberalization of trade, in-depth changes have occurred, impacted by the outbreak of several food and feed crises, increasing fears about food safety, the spread of animal diseases, and growing concerns about the environmental and social sustainability of aquaculture. This in turn has shaped new trade regimes for market access and driven new schemes for aquaculture value chain development and governance.

Value chain analysis, development, and governance have emerged in the last 20 years as tools to analyze and understand the dynamics at value chain nodes of key players, economic costs and benefits, value addition and value creation, and to develop policy options, and suitable market instruments for the promotion of sustainable aquaculture.

The regional workshop on aquaculture value chain actor's practices of post-harvest management will be held physically in Bodrum, Turkey on 22-24 March as part of the Project “Capacity Development for Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture Management in Central Asia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey” which is being implemented under FAO–Turkey Partnership Programme on Food and Agriculture.  

The primary objectives of this workshop are to provide participants with the basic knowledge on:

1) aquaculture value chain and post-harvest management;

2) dynamics of relevant value-chains in international fish trade; and

3) exchange experiences on the basics of the value chain and its actors throughout the chain, post-harvest management and international trade.

The workshop will incorporate an event to mark the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture 2022.

The workshop targets aquaculture value chains actors from the following countries: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan.