The Fish farming business is experiencing a huge decline just as majority of the business in Nigeria of nowadays are doing due to the recession and bad exchange rate . The recession is affecting the fish farming industry in many way but there is this one that appears to be the primary problem of the industry and its HIGH COST OF FEED.
High cost of feed: 80% of the cost of production in fish farming is for feed alone, with majority of the fish farmers depending on ready made fish feed which are mostly imported . The high naira-dollar exchange rate has affected the cost of importing this feeds which in return amount to a huge increase in the sales price of the feeds.
Even the ready made in Nigeria feed are also expensive as they also import some of their raw material like fish meal from abroad coupled with increase in power tarriff/gas,increase in cost of production ,increase in cost of logistics and many more.
Although efforts are on going by different association of fish farmers in different states to increase the sales price of fish at the farm gate but even when you consider the prices proposed by this organisations and the cost of this ready made feeds in the market especially the imported ones then one will say it is a case of monkey dey work baboon dey chop.
Imagine a foreign feed that use to sale for N5000/15kg bag now selling for N11500 /15kg bag that is more than 100% increase in the price and the new proposed price for table size fish that use to sell for N480-500/kg is now N700, that is obviously less than 50% increase in the sales price of fish at farm gate.
Yet the market women are not willing to buy at the newly proposed price by the farmers,hence many farmers not restocking after harvest and even those who refuse to give up will stock less than half of what they harvested in other for them to be able to feed their new stock adequately.
But tough times calls for tough measures, even in the midst of all these, i tell you its a good time to venture into fish farming. You only need two things to survive in the business at this time , they are; cutting your cost of production and adding value to your harvest.
First let us talk about cutting cost of production, how do you cut your cost of production with the increase in cost of feed in the market? the answer is formulate your own fish feed. If not from fingerlings to table size then start formulating your own feed from jumbo or when they start picking 4mm foreign feed to table size depending on the type of local feed you are using (i.e floating or sinking).
To formulate your own feed you have to understand aquaculture nutrition. The materials for formulating fish feeds are mostly gotten from factory/industrial waste . The materials can be classified into two classes namely macro ingredient and micro ingredients
Macro ingredients are the major feed ingredients and consist of about 98% of the Feed compound.
It is further divided into three namely starch/carbohydrate, protein and lipid.
Examples of starch: maize,whole wheat,wheat flour, cassava flour,biscuit(factory waste),gala (factory waste) custard powder,semolina,rice bran etc % of starch should be between 15-30% depending on the type of feed (sinking or floating), energy requirement for the fish you are compounding the Feed for ,binding capacity of the starch available at your disposal etc
Examples of protein: soybean meal (sbm), groundnut cake (gnc), bdg,feather meal,blood meal,fish meal,chicken meal, maggot meal,pkc, sesame seed meal, cottonseed meal etc the protein is also divided into plant and animal protein with the animal protein having more crude protein than the plant protein and are always more expensive.% of protein should be between 65-85 % depending on the crude protein of the you want to compound and the crude protein of the material available at your disposal.
Examples of lipid: soya oil,cattle fat,fish oil,groundnut oil,palm oil,rapeseed oil etc % of lipid should b between 3-7% of your feed compound depending on the type of feed (i.e floating or sinking) and also the age/stage at which your fish are.
No comments:
Post a Comment