Top 6 Challenges in fish farming in Nigeria

Fish farming is one of the best and fast money-spinning businesses in the 21st century. However, farmers still have challenges in terms of scaling up the fish farming business.

Despite the problems confronting people in fish farming, anyone with the right skill could venture into it and make reasonable money. Fish farming has a lot of benefits such that anyone can either use the business as the main source of income or an additional source of income.

Whether small, medium, or large-scale, fish farming is open without regulations for any individual to venture into. That notwithstanding, going into fish farming without adequate training can pose a problem to your investment.

In this post, we will see look at some of the major problems in fish farming especially when it comes to large-scale production.

Challenges in Fish Farming

Just like any other business, fish farming no matter the type has its difficulties. Some of these difficulties include but are not limited to the availability of space, electricity, security, bad road network, source of water, and cost of feeding.

1. Availability of Space: For the production of large quantities of fish enough space/ land is needed. Availability of these large expanses of land is one of the challenges farmers who are willing to scale up their production encounter in fish farming.

The reason is that more fish ponds both concrete and earthen ponds need to be constructed. As a matter of fact, fish need good spacing for them to grow as expected and when there is not enough space it affects both fish growth and production capacity.

Another issue with space/land is that majority of the required space is found in rural communities very far from the market. Considering the distance from the rural to the urban market, how to sell the fish becomes another issue because the transportation cost would be included in the production cost.

2. Electricity: One would ask if electricity is a problem in fish farming. It is one of the major problems discouraging fish farmers, especially in Nigeria. Why Nigeria is because of the epileptic power supply and politics in the power sector.

Constant power supply as we know help both small and medium enterprise to scale up their businesses and reduce the cost of production. In fish farming, one needs electricity to power his pumping machine, feed pellet machine, fish drier or smoking kilm, aerator, and other fish farming equipment. 

If the power supply continues the way it is in the nearest future many businesses will not survive since alternative sources of energy such as generator sets and solar are costly.

3. Security: The challenge of security is mainly encountered by large-scale fish farmers. A lot of people who invested huge some in their fish farms lost 60 percent (60%) of their investment due to security issues.

Presently, due to the harder-farmer crisis, many have pulled out from the business on the ground that their lives are at risk. Theft by common criminals have also contributed to the challenges farmers face in fish farming.

4. Bad Road Network: Those whose farms are in rural villages far from the city market can relate better to the effects of bad roads. Bad road network is a big challenge when it comes to moving farm produce from rural to the urban market where the product would be sold.

Sometimes due to bad roads, potential customers find it difficult to visit farms in remote villages. The effect of this is that when farms suffer to get their fish to the city it will impact the cost of the product and selling the fish at a reduced price becomes an issue.

5. Water Source: The life of a fish is the water, therefore, the source of water for your fish matter in terms of the growth and health of fish.

Portable water with good pH is needed to ensure good production. Also, ensure there is frequent water change so as to prevent mortality and reduce fish diseases. 

6. Cost of Fish Feed: Feeding constitutes 70% of the expenditure in fish farming. Fish feed quality matters a lot if the fish are to grow as expected but the constant hike in feed prices is discouraging.

There has been about a 40% increase in the prices of fish feed in Nigeria. This has really affected farmers as the cost of feeding impacts negatively on their source of livelihood. However, one could how to make fish feed at home at least to cut down feeding expenses.

Other challenges include:

1. Access to funding
2. Insufficient supply of fish feed
3. Lack of trained personnel
4. The increasing cost of fish feed
5. Lack of government interventions
6. Open market location
7. Lack of adequate fish breed

Conclusion

Fish farming as we earlier established is a good source of making money but the business has its’ own challenge. In the post, we look at these challenges which include the availability of space, epileptic power supply, issue of security, cost of fish feed, bad road network, and source of water.

There are ways to tackle these challenges encountered in fish farming. Some of these include the availability of funds, construction of good roads from urban to rural villages, fixing issues in the power sector and proper government interventions.