By Winston Muleba Junior
His Excellency Mr. Michael
Chilufya Sata, president of the republic of Zambia on the occasion of the
official opening of the third session of the eleventh national
assembly on a Friday of 20th September, 2013 made mention
that the
promotion of a diversified agriculture, forestry and fisheries sector will be a
central pillar of development strategy for consolidating economic growth in
2014. The agriculture sector is the key to
assuring national food and nutritional security, mitigating high poverty levels
and creating job opportunities. To this effect, his Excellency stated that
government will enhance use of science and technology in pursuit of its policy
objective of achieving a competitive, diversified and
sustainable agricultural sector.
Aquaculture
promotion in Zambia has a long history such that farmer’s constraints have been
long overdue. Some of the long standing constraints to fish farmers include; chronic
shortages of quality fish seed; for the reason that only few farmers have
hatcheries on their farms because there
is inadequate support despite the sector’s ability to contribute so positively
to the GDP. The
source for quality Fingerlings are also a challenge to some farmers. The
Department of fisheries endeavors wishes to promote sustainable utilization of
fisheries resources thereby contributing to the economy through the generation
of employment, income and improved availability of fish; contribute towards
poverty reduction through making fish readily available as a reliable and
sustainable source of protein especially for the rural communities (ACF/FSRP 2009). Inadequate extension
services, on new production techniques and processing
technologies to small-scale fish farmers have been of limited effectiveness.
This has been due to poor evaluation of target groups and inadequate extension
coverage. Lack
of comprehensive training packages and materials: is also a constraint among
fish farmers, this includes lack of Technical skills among most small-scale
fish farmers in terms of fish Husbandry practices and pond construction. High
cost of fish feed; according to Machena & Moehl (2001) feed remains one of
the most prominent barriers to expanded aquaculture production, especially
medium- and large-scale production. Unless affordable feed costs can be
maintained, farm-raised products cannot compete with those coming from capture
fisheries, unless there is significant value added through the production of
luxury items. Most fish farmers have then
resorted to using local formulated feed made of soya beans, sun flower mixed
with maize meal or bran and binding with cassava. Lack of capital to improve and
increase their investment in aquaculture; this hence brought about poor
marketing delivery strategies especially because of Lack of transport and post harvesting facilities among most
fish farmers. On the marketing aspect of the product, there is available market
for fish; this also confirms limited development
in aquaculture owing to inadequate investment. With declining incomes in
capture fisheries resulting from the depletion of stocks of preferred fish
species and sizes, opportunities for growth in the sector is likely to come
from increased and coordinated investment in aquaculture.
These problems
in the sector are faced by both the small-scale and large-scale fish farmers.
His Excellency Mr. Michael Chilufya Sata in the speech further stated that,
Government will reposition the fisheries sub-sector so that the country can
become a net exporter of fish. To achieve this, the government will promote
aquaculture development and improve infrastructure for fisheries research and
marketing. In particular, Government will promote the growing of fish
fingerlings by the private sector, promote pen and cage culture and establish
lake based hatcheries and nurseries and
lake based nurseries across the country.
As such the government should massively consider alleviating
the constraints that fish farmers are faced with considering that the
contribution to GDP of fisheries and aquaculture has been so positive. As a subsector of the agricultural sector,
the fisheries and aquaculture sector averaged 3 percent out of the 18 percent
share that agriculture, forestry and fishing contributed to GDP (ZDA, 2011).
According to Zambia Agriculture Sector Profile, 2011 a report confirms that the
subsector produced about 5 000 tonnes per year of fish. Of this, 75 percent
came from Small-scale aquaculture, while commercial fish farmers produced the
other 25 percent.
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