Benefits of Fish Farming

“Teach a man to fish…”

Actually don’t. Teach his entire family to farm fish.

Fish farming has been one of our most successful interventions for improving livelihoods among rural smallholder farmers in Tanzania.

Fish farming is relatively simple, and it has a number of benefits. Here are just a few of my favorites (the last is often overlooked and might actually be my favorite):

• Improved nutrition: supplies protein and essential nutrients like Omega-3 fatty acids

• Enhanced farm sustainability: through integration with other agricultural activities e.g. nutrient recycling, water management, and pest control

• Increased income: fish can be sold direct to consumers (even one at a time) or to local markets

• Diversification of income: makes possible income throughout the year and reduces financial risks of depending on a single crop

• Dignity and pride: demonstrate to one’s community a clear area of expertise and enhances ability to be hospitable (you might not believe how proud someone can be to serve fish to a guest at their home)

We’ve primarily focused on tilapia, but in late February we began farming catfish.

A few quick technical notes, for those of you interested:

• We stock 6 catfish per square meter of pond surface area. This is 3 times the number of tilapia we can stock..

• We feed our catfish daily with a mix of tilapia fingerlings, kitchen scraps, and purchased high protein feeds. Farmers can easily do without the purchased feeds; it will just slow time to harvest and therefore number of harvests per year.

• The catfish pictured are just over 7 months old.

-bh