By Okong’o Oduya
Budalangi, Lake Victoria: As the global weather patterns change due to climate change, fishing at Lake Victoria is also facing the brunt of the climate.
The myriad of challenges facing the fishing sector in Lake Victoria in Budalangi and Samia sub-counties and the region sharing the resources in Lake Victoria in general, Mr. Fredrick Juma has sought an alternative way of raring fish on dry land.
In his Hydro Victoria Fish Hatchery farm in port Victoria Budalangi Sub County, Mr. Juma has ventured into a large-scale fish-farming business.
He has 54 fish ponds on the farm where he produces fingerlings for tilapia as well as raring other traditional fish and then sells them to fish farmers and traders in the county and beyond.
According to him, he produces 150 fingerlings of Tilapia every month and then sells them to other fish farmers around the lake, especially those doing fish cage farming in lake Victoria.
“We hatch fingerlings such as tilapia, catfish, and the ornamental fish used to decorate homes and offices. We also have other traditional fish such as Ningu. We get them from rivers and swamps then we reproduce them to find a way we can have enough food for our people in this time where fish supply has been reducing yearly,” explains Juma.
Juma says he was pushed into fish farming in 2018 after realizing that the demand for fingerlings for fish cage farming and fish as food was high with little supply from within, that is when he came to bridge the gap by raring the fingerlings and selling them to farmers.
“We did our research in 2018 and realized that there was a scarcity of fingerlings to those who wanted to venture into fish farming that is when we started raring the fish and selling them locally to the farmers,” Juma notes.
Adding “Reports revealed that it is from 2017 the region started experiencing fish scarcity in Lake Victoria. Before 2017, the Port Victoria market was known to be the center for fish, which was supplied in Kenya and beyond, but as a result of climate change and overfishing in the lake fish population declined, and to fill the gap people started investing in fish cage farming and that means there was a demand for fingerlings to stock their cages.”
“Being that Uganda has more than 40% of the lake compared to Kenya’s 6%, Kenyan fishermen are tempted to cross to Uganda to fish, where they face harassment from Ugandan security officers, for them to avoid fishing in Ugandan it leaves Kenya without enough fish supply forcing them to seek an alternative, which is through fish cage and ponds.”
“Global statistics show that from 2017 fish population in lake Victoria started reducing due to a number of reasons including global warming, climate change, overfishing as well as water pollution” he explains.
Juma says Kenya before 2017, Port Victoria was the main supply center for fish from Uganda, until when Ugandan government banned fish from going to Kenya. They militarized operations in the lake which made it difficult for Kenyan fishermen to cross to Uganda for fishing.
“That is why we are encouraging fish farming either through the fish cage or fish ponds just to try and bridge the gap. As a country, we have got a deficit of fish supply in Kenya of 500,000 tons every year.”
“The current demand is at 700,000 tons but what we can get from the lake, farming, and what is imported from china is only 200,000 tons annually, which is a big gap. We are coming in as a farm to try and do what we can in a month we hatch150, 000 fingerlings and sell them to farmers besides training them on fish farming scale”
To have enough supply of fish feed, Mr. Juma noted that they have embarked on training farmers in the area how to rare black soldier fly to help them supplement their meal with enough protein for their fish.
“We are also doing research on an insect called black solder fly. The insect looks like a normal fly that feeds on any dirt but it is rich in protein we use for animal feed when processed. We have trained 56 farmers who are ready to start raring the fly then we buy larvae from them and manufacture fish feeds to reduce the cost of feeding,” he said
“The cost of feeding in any farming is consuming up to 70% of production cost. We just want to come up with a way we can reduce the cost of feeding to 30%. We want to partner with other stakeholders to across the county where people can rare this fly and then sell to us we make the feed.”
According to him, fish farming in ponds on dry land is more profitable and reliable compared to fish cage farming which is risky due to climate change as well as water pollution causing the death of millions of fish including those in cages at lake Victoria.
On the same farm, Mr Juma has embraced poultry and vegetable farming which supplement his fish farming business.
Like any other venture, there are challenges Mr Juma is facing in his business including a lack of enough finances and education to run the operations of the farm, as he has to source elsewhere to run his business effectively.
“The main challenge we are facing is the high cost of feeding the fish. Getting enough food for the fish requires a lot of money which has required external funding but so far there is none, we use our own resources.”
“To be successful in this business we need to train other farmers how to look after fish for them to venture into farming. Fish farming is not like any other form of farming that you can do with little education, but with fish farming it requires training and with limited resources, we can’t do much” He noted.
He appealed for the county government of Busia to partner with the existing model farms in the county to train farmers on different modes of farming to better their lives as well as boost food security in the county.
