Big fish eat little fish: expanding commodity frontiers of farmed sea bass and sea bream in Turkey and West Africa

Abstract Production of seafood has received relatively little attention in agri-food debates despite the fact that, since the 1960s, seafood production has been transformed through the industrialization of fisheries and globalization of seafood commodity chains. Intensive aquaculture emerged as a new industry in response to declining fish catches. Global commodity chains of seafood and capital accumulation processes changed tremendously, leading to complex international trade dynamics and rising inequalities. The Turkish aquaculture sector has also been transformed via government subsidies, and a few vertically integrated aquaculture companies started to produce farmed sea bass and sea bream (SBSB) in Turkish waters, while organizing their operations both upstream (processing of fish feed in Africa) and downstream (sales and distribution in Europe) in the global SBSB value chain. We adopted a single commodity approach to uncover how seafood production has been transformed via expanding commodity frontiers of capital-intensive SBSB production by focusing on the strategies of Turkish aquaculture enterprises, trade dynamics, and socio-ecological implications of SBSB production via in-depth interviews with key stakeholders and a review of legislative documents and trade data. Our analysis offers critical insights into the agrarian-change debate in Turkey by analyzing the global and regional socio-ecological inequalities created by Turkish SBSB production.