200 Fish Farmers To Receive Integrated Aquaculture Training

Some 200 fish farmers in four villages of the South West Region including Yoke, Malende, Teke-Kumba will receive training in integrated aquaculture.

Integrated aquaculture is a system whereby fish is cultivated and integrated with some agricultural products such as rice, pigs and poultry to optimize yields.

The Coordinator of the West and Central African Council for Agriculture Research and Development (CORAF/WECARD) project, in Cameroon, Dr. Oben, told The Green Vision in an interview that the farmers will be trained under two separate projects.

The first project will cover sustainable integrated pond-based aquaculture with rice and poultry production and economic, social and environmental assessment.

The second project will deal with poverty eradication and grassroots empowerment through sustainable integrated aquaculture development: fish and rice cum piggery production.

This project is for three countries that have won two projects together Nigeria, Cameroon and Sierra Leone and the projects are based in the University of Ibadan, Buea and Njalla University, Sierra Leone.

There is a demonstration farm in Yoke village which will be in charge of the production of rice, fish and piggery integrated. The essence is to increase the production of all these crops and animal given that they all depend on each other. This station will be used to train over 100 fish farmers. The other demonstration farm in Teke-Kumba has fish rice and poultry. A hundred farmers will also be trained on how to produce fish, poultry and rice integrated.

In Teke-Kumba there is one demonstration farm with fish, rice and poultry. The rice is already growing for the two projects.

The essence of integrating these products is to permit the circulation of nutrients. Waste from chicken, for example, would be used as organic fertilizer for the growing of rice. This will help farmers to avoid spending money in buying chemical fertilizer.

The project will greatly help in the fight against food insecurity given that they are connected with the local community.

Dr. Oben equally explained that the research team is carrying out applied research from the laboratory to the field with the University of Buea as a platform where there is an on-station research.

“The research is on-going in the University of Buea and we are going to call farmers at one point to give their own inputs. We have started the development of a demonstration farm for rice, piggery and poultry integrated,” Dr. Oben told said.

He said one of the main factors that led to the birth of the project is the fact that fish farming had started in Cameroon a long time ago, but Cameroonians were spending a lot of money on aquaculture yet they were not able to make profits because they lacked technical knowhow.

“We are teaching farmers how they can integrate their different crops with fish, poultry or piggery to increase production of yields. This new model will help farmers realize a profit of up to 60-90% of their investment. We have planted rice and stocked 2.000 fish in the two projects. We will invite stakeholders and farmers to come and see the demonstration farm,” said Oben.

The Coordinator said they have already started selling the birds.

“We raised a total of 150 birds in two months which were sold and we ploughed back the same number. Very soon we will harvest 1.000 fish and we are going to carry the successes of the demonstration farm in the University to the communities,” he said.

He equally told The Green Vision that they are preparing the training manual that will help the research team to train the 200 farmers.

 The selection of the demonstration farm is based on groups or individuals already involved in fish farming in one way or the other.

The Coordinator also said they wish to replicate benefits and as such, the products from the demonstration farm at the University of Buea will be used to support farmers especially after two years when the project will come to an end.

Oben said aquaculture intends to provide communities with alternative income generating activities which will prevent them from going into the wild to hunt endangered species.