High cost of feeds threatens fish farming -WAAPI
The chairman, Abuja chapter of the West Africa Aquaculture Productivity Initiative (WAAPI), a platform in the aquaculture industry which deals with the entire value chain, Albert Tever Best, has said that the major challenge in the fishery industry now is the price of fish feed. He said at a capacity building training for fish […]
The chairman, Abuja chapter of the West Africa Aquaculture Productivity Initiative (WAAPI), a platform in the aquaculture industry which deals with the entire value chain, Albert Tever Best, has said that the major challenge in the fishery industry now is the price of fish feed.
He said at a capacity building training for fish farmers organised by the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research (NIOMR), a multi-disciplinary marine research institute and Nigeria’s prime institute for marine sciences.
He said price of fish feed was going up astronomically while the price of fish remained stagnant, adding that many farmers were now going out of production.
“They (NIOMR) have the technology and they are building up innovative platform and we are one of the platforms they have chosen to benefit from that technology. Farmers who have fish of 250 to 300 grams have an option to can it instead of spending huge money on feed which truncates the farmers’ profits,” Mr. Best said.
Mr. Adeyemi Remi, a research scientist with NIOMR, who explained how the technology works said farmers could make huge turnover if they avail themselves the opportunity the technology presented to them.
Dr. Oresegun Adekunle, a director in the Department of Biotechnology in the institute, explained to the farmers the value they could still get from the waste that was generated in the process of canning, adding that the head of the fish which cannot be canned, can be process for sale in areas where such parts are highly consumed.