‘We have developed canned catfish technology to help farmers’

How is the WAAPP intervention in aquaculture involving three institutions among which your institute is prominent?Well, first of all we must all thank WAAPP for this opportunity because as you can see, a lot of resources are dwindling. What we have now is that is actually sustaining us in terms of research are the WAAPP […]

How is the WAAPP intervention in aquaculture involving three institutions among which your institute is prominent?
Well, first of all we must all thank WAAPP for this opportunity because as you can see, a lot of resources are dwindling. What we have now is that is actually sustaining us in terms of research are the WAAPP projects. Incidentally we are involved in all the three WAAPP projects.
You know the WAAPP project is divided into three core areas; these have to do with fingerlings production, fish feed and post-harvest. So we have so many projects that are covered under these three projects. I must tell you that WAAPP has been very magnanimous in giving us money to enable us to attain some of our research findings.
In addition to WAAPP I must also say that the exposure that WAAPP has given some of the research institutes, also resulted in what I can call additional funding even from outside Nigeria. I will give you example of NIOMAR, my institute, where sometime last year WAAPP took all the people involved in the project to Niamey, Niger Republic. Incidentally that give us the opportunity to exhibit some of our products; we exhibited canned catfish. People were actually surprised
You mean we have canned catfish in Nigeria?
Yes, we have canned catfish and that is why the director in the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) said if this is possible and we have the facilities, why don’t you now put up a project so that we can form farmers into what we called innovation platform – so that these farmers can form an innovation platform around canned catfish. So we wrote a proposal which was accepted and we are getting funding now for that project from FARA.
And what does it entail?
It entails us to get farmers together. The whole idea of canning catfish emanated from the fact that when you culture your fish, you find out that all fingers is not equal. You can put 1000 fishes in the water but at the end of the day, you find out that maybe only 50% will go to 1 killogramme (kg) and above. The remaining ones will be below 500 grams, 600 grams and so on and so forth. And so when in the market one wants to buy your fish, they prefer the big ones – they prefer to pay good price for the ones that are 1kg and above. For example they will be willing to pay N500 or even N600 per kilo. But when we now have some fish species that are three pieces making one killogramme that is where the problem lies. You have to sell these one to us maybe N250 or N300 so that is at a loss to the farmer.
We started trying to educate the farmers; trying to create awareness that, look it is not compulsory that you must sell off all your fish fresh. Why don’t you add the value? You should be able to sell your fish – whether three pieces, one piece, or even four pieces, at N600 per kg irrespective of the number of pieces.
Is this technology of canned catfish transferable to farmers?
Yes. A farmer that has enough money can do it alone.
Can the farmers buy it?
Yes. Because you see the issue is that, in India, Thailand and other Asian countries, they started with all these small cottage level technologies. Up till now if you go to India, the economy is run on small level cottage technologies. So these are small cottage level technologies with which you can produce so many canned catfish. For example what we have in our institute can produce 30 cans per minute.
How can small holder farmers key into this?
We have perfected that technology in the institute; we have the machines and everything. We are now saying okay, let us form farmers into a platform – forming them into this platform means that they can be using our facilities in the interim. After that they can now source money from Bank of Industry and then buy these machines to put up a small factory – we are not looking for a gigantic factory. This one we have at the institute right now can produce only 30 cans per minutes.
How much does it cost to acquire the canning machine?
It depends on the level of operations one wants to go for; you can get the machine ranging from $7,000 to $15,000. When people form themselves into cooperatives, you will find out this is a small amount of money. The stainless steel is there, the labour is there.
We have some of these canned technologies on ground; we have held meetings and formed farmers’ platforms. Before they can get together to get money through cooperative or Bank of Industry or through their own contributions, our facilities are at their disposal. So the whole idea now is that, they can be bringing the fish from farmer A, farmer B- all the fish that people don’t want to buy at reasonable price, gather it together come to our institute and use the facilities; we’ll just charge them a token amount, they will put it in the cans and sell at reasonable prices.