Globalized Fisheries, Depeasantization and Debt Bondage in Philippine Seafood Exporting
Maria Cecilia Ferolin, Wilma A. Dunaway

Abstract
Through national development policies, Philippine fisheries and ecological resources are being rapidly depleted, and peasants have been demonized as the cause of this degradation. This ideological construct serves to legitimate public policies that are pushing toward depeasantization of fisheries to make way for greater resource exploitation by large exporters. Debt bondage requires households to commit a greater share of their budgets to export-oriented production, leaving fewer resources for household survival. Increasingly, peasant fishers must compete with export agendas for their livelihoods and for household access to food proteins. Indeed, fishing households are poorer and are twice as likely to experience chronic malnutrition as other Filipinos.

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