孟加拉国批发商与水产养殖价值链“隐性中间环节”的转型

Hazrat Ali1,2· Ben Belton3,4· Mohammad Mahfujul Haque2· Ricardo Hernandez5· Khondker Murshed-e-Jahan1·Liz Ignowski6· Thomas Reardon3,4 Received: 22 November 2024 / Accepted: 15 September 2025 / Published online: 4 November 2025© The Author(s) 2025 Abstract The rapid growth of aquaculture in Bangladesh over the past 30 years has been accompanied by a proliferation of whole-salers. Wholesalers are often assumed in academic and public discourse to be exploitative and inefficient: extracting rentsrather than driving technological change. This view gives rise to development programs that seek to bypass marketingintermediaries or upgrade their practices. However, there has been little rigorous research on the behavior of wholesalersand its implications for outcomes of value chain performance, including food security. To address this gap, we imple-mented a statistically representative survey of 229 aquatic food wholesalers in 31 markets in one of Bangladesh’s mostimportant aquaculture zones. We found the following. (1) The wholesale segment of the aquaculture value chain has grown 1Introduction longstanding perceptions give rise to interventions that seekto eliminate or reduce the number of intermediaries involvedin value chains (Koshy et al.,2021) or upgrade their conduct Wholesalers in agri-food value chains in the Global Southare often represented in academic, policy, and populardebates as exploitative (Koshy et al.,2021), inefficient(Guarín,2013), or wasteful (dos Santos et al.,2020). These Aquaculture is a rapidly growing segment of the globalfood system (Naylor et al.,2023), including in Bangladeshwhere aquaculture output increased more than 20 timesin the past four decades (DoF,2022). Negative tropes indebates on the role of wholesalers in agri-food value chainsin the Global South are apparent in both academic literature 1WorldFish, Bangladesh and South Asia Office, House#335/A, Road # 114, Dhaka 1212, Bangladesh2Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh,Bangladesh3Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA4International Food Policy Research Institute, Dhaka,Bangladesh5Alliance Bioversity International – CIAT, Hanoi, Vietnam6World Vegetable Center, Bangkok, Thailand For example, Dey et al. (2001) reported that “[fish] mar-kets are poorly competitive in Bangladesh” (p2). “Transportappears to be a very big problem for the movement of fish”(p3). “Most rural markets… operate under the open skywithout any facilities for stalls, electricity, water and park-ing” (p3). “Intermediaries operating at the primary markets Similar logics and desires underpin development programsin aquaculture and other agri-food sectors that seek toimprove value chain functioning by reducing transactioncosts, upgrading the practices of value chain actors - such asthrough interventions promoting use of plastic trays, collec- negotiation”. (p3) “Marketing margins are usually high infish trading (p3). “Market intermediaries usually providemarketing credit… The aqua producers receiving produc-tion credit from the intermediaries are obliged to sell their Writing a decade later, Ahmed (2010) found that “farmerscan not earn a good profit because they have a limited accessto market” (p19). “The intermediaries avail the opportunityand exploit both the farmers at the farm-gate level and con-sumers at the retail point… [consumer] prices go up withincreasing number of transactions in the fish marketingchannel” (p19). “Constraints” to the “sustainability” of fishmarketing in Bangladesh reported by Ahmed include, “poorroad and transport facilities, higher transport costs, insuf- In contrast, an emerging body of international academicliterature points to the underappreciated role of micro, small,and medium enterprise (MSME) wholesalers in agri-foodvalue chains in the Global South in facilitating agriculturaldevelopment (Liverpool-Tasie et al.,2020) and ensuringfood security for consumers (Belton et al.,2020). This mid-stream value chain segment has been branded the “hidden Moreover, the midstream segments of agrifood (Dolis-lager et al.,2021) and aquaculture value chains are oftenthought to provide large numbers of jobs (Irwin et al.,2021;Joffre et al.,2021; Nasr-Allah et al.,2020; Phillips et al., Islam et al. (2021) present similar findings with referenceto aquaculture in Bangladesh a further decade on, report-ing that, “The major constraints of fish marketing system[are]… lack of cold storage facilities, insufficient ice supply,poor water supply, exploitation by middlemen, poor trans-port system, inadequate drainage system, high transporta-tion cost and poor sanitary facilities” (p6). They also state 2015), but the scale and characteristics of this employment These themes in the debate – and the diagnoses, interven-tions, and policy prescriptions that arise from them – haveseveral important implications for food security. First, mid-stream value chain segments that generate low (high) levelsof food loss and waste may increase