Salted Shores, Frozen Markets: A Curatorial Frame on the Galunggong Paradox
Salted Shores, Frozen Markets: A Curatorial Frame on the Galunggong Paradox
Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™
The galunggong paradox is less an ecological inevitability than a policy‑made logistics failure: the Philippines imported 13,856.64 MT of frozen galunggong (55% of a 25,056.27 MT authorization) in late 2022–early 2023, revealing dependence on frozen supply amid domestic cold‑chain gaps.
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Curatorial frame
The galunggong—the roundscad once canonized in Philippine kitchens as the “poor man’s fish”—functions here as a cultural object and index: a foodstuff that maps class, coastal labor, and state absence. My curatorial frame treats the fish as both artifact and symptom. On the one hand, it is a quotidian aesthetic—smell, market light, the ritual of bargaining—that anchors working‑class life. On the other, it is a ledger entry in national trade policy: the Department of Agriculture authorized imports totaling 25,056.27 MT, of which 13,856.64 MT arrived by January 2023, a statistic that reads like a rebuke to the archipelago’s maritime self‑image.
Seen through the lens of cultural practice, the fisher’s boat is a studio, the landing a gallery, and the middleman a curator of scarcity. The aesthetic irony is sharp: an ocean nation that stages its identity around water now consumes frozen, imported iterations of its own staple. This frame insists that the problem is not only biological (overfishing) but infrastructural and political—post‑harvest cold‑chain failure, market capture by intermediaries, and policy choices that privilege imports over local capacity building.
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Disconfirming the alternative
The competing thesis—“we import because the sea is empty”—is partially true where illegal, distant‑water fleets and localized depletion occur, but it is insufficient. Empirical import data and seasonal closed‑season policies show imports are also a demand‑management and market‑stabilization tool. The presence of large, subsidized foreign supply chains that freeze at sea and the absence of municipal cold storage explain why abundance becomes absence at market; thus, ecological scarcity alone cannot account for the observed trade flows.
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Curatorial narrative critique
Imagine a wet market as an exhibition: stalls arranged like installations, each tub of galunggong a curated statement about value. The fisherman’s catch—raw, ephemeral—competes with a polished, frozen import that arrives with the imprimatur of state necessity. The critique is twofold: aesthetic and political. Aesthetically, the frozen fish is a simulacrum of place; politically, it is evidence of a governance aesthetic that prefers quick fixes (imports) to durable public infrastructure (cold storage, cooperative processing). The irony is delicious and bitter: we import the image of our own coastal life because we failed to preserve the conditions that make that life economically viable.
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Expanded summative
Recommendations: invest in municipal cold‑chain infrastructure; subsidize fisher cooperatives to own ice plants and cold rooms; reform import CNIs to be conditional on domestic capacity targets; implement landing‑to‑market price transparency. These are curatorial acts—reframing markets so that the fisherman’s catch is exhibited, preserved, and remunerated rather than liquidated at the shore.
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Sources and footnotes
Footnotes:
1. DA‑BFAR import arrival figures, January 2023.
2. Reporting on DA import authorizations and political debate, May 2022.
3. Malaya Business Insight summary of BFAR import arrivals, January 2023.
Selected bibliography
- Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources. “BFAR: 13,856 MT of imported galunggong arrives.” GMA News Online, January 26, 2023.
- Bondoc, Jarius. “Dar signs last‑minute fish imports from China.” Philippine Star, May 27, 2022.
- Malaya Business Insight. “BFAR: Only 55% of approved galunggong imports arrived.” January 27, 2023.
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The Philippines—once sustained by the cheap, abundant “galunggong” (roundscad)—now imports thousands of metric tons of frozen galunggong, revealing a supply‑chain failure rather than an absolute absence of fish; 13,856.64 MT of approved galunggong imports arrived out of 25,056.27 MT granted in late 2022, illustrating the scale of reliance on foreign frozen supply.
Introduction
This essay synthesizes historical, ecological, economic, and logistical evidence to explain the paradox: an archipelagic nation with 7,641 islands importing galunggong. It argues that while biological and international‑fleet pressures matter, the decisive proximate cause is post‑harvest logistics failure—insufficient cold chain, market structures that favor middlemen, and policy gaps that make local catches uncompetitive.
Historical context: Galunggong as the poor man’s fish
Galunggong (Decapterus spp.) was long the Philippines’ staple low‑cost protein, widely available in wet markets and central to working‑class diets. Scholarly reviews record that it was known as the “poor man’s fish” in the 1990s and that production has declined substantially since 2007, affecting price and availability.
The macroeconomic paradox: imports despite abundant seas
Official reporting and customs datasets show large, government‑sanctioned import programs for frozen roundscad and related species to augment market supply during seasonal closures and shortages. For example, only 55% (13,856.64 MT) of a 25,056.27 MT import authorization arrived by January 2023, underscoring both dependence on imports and logistical complexity. National customs and trade portals record continuing import flows.
Why it isn’t only overfishing: the logistics argument
- Cold‑chain gap. Small‑scale fishers land perishable catches in tropical heat; without state‑funded, industrial cold storage at local ports, spoilage risk forces immediate sale at low prices to middlemen. This structural weakness converts biological abundance into market scarcity for fresh, locally handled fish.
- Market structure and price signals. Middlemen capture value by buying cheaply at landing and controlling distribution; frozen imports—often produced and frozen at scale abroad—enter markets at prices local fishers cannot match. Government trade data and import authorizations show policy choices that permit and sometimes encourage such imports.
- Technology asymmetry. Foreign fleets and processors use onboard freezing and industrial logistics, enabling multi‑week operations and price competitiveness that small boats cannot replicate without investment.
Policy implications and recommendations
Priority interventions: invest in local cold storage and ice plants at municipal ports; subsidize cooperative‑owned cold chains; reform landing‑to‑market price transparency; and align import policy with domestic capacity building. These measures would raise fisher incomes, reduce post‑harvest losses, and restore competitiveness of fresh local galunggong.
Risks and trade‑offs
- Fiscal cost of cold‑chain infrastructure is substantial and requires maintenance and governance.
- Short‑term market disruption may occur as imports are phased down; social protection for consumers and transitional support for processors will be necessary.
Conclusion
The galunggong paradox is less a story of empty seas than of failed logistics and policy choices. Rebuilding cold‑chain capacity, empowering fisher cooperatives, and recalibrating import policy are the most direct levers to reverse dependence on frozen imports and restore affordable local protein for Filipino households.
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Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™ curatorial writing practice exemplifies this path: transforming grief into infrastructure, evidence into agency, and memory into resistance. As the Philippines enters a new economic decade, such work is not peripheral—it is foundational.
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A multidisciplinary Filipino artist, poet, researcher, and cultural worker whose practice spans painting, printmaking, photography, installation, and writing. He is deeply rooted in cultural memory, postcolonial critique, and in bridging creative practice with scholarly infrastructure—building counter-archives, annotating speculative poetry like Southeast Asian manuscripts, and fostering regional solidarity through ethical art collaboration.
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Furthermore, the commentary reflects my personal interpretation of publicly available data and is offered as fair comment on matters of public interest. It does not allege criminal liability or wrongdoing by any individual.
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