Fish farming not so 'overcrowded'... Opportunities revealed

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural
Development, Dr Adewumi Adeshina, has
revealed that Nigeria consumes over two million,
three hundred three hundred thousand metric
tonnes (2.3 MMT) of fish while producing only
7000 metric tonnes .
The minister made the revelation in an exclusive
interview with LEADERSHIP. He said, "We import
roughly about 1.4 million metric tonnes, but I
believe we can replace that, which is why we
went into aqua culture value chain, in which our
goal is to grow table size fish by roughly 100,000
metric tonnes.
"We want to be able to replace about 1million
metric tonnes from modern aqua culture, our
youths are getting into it. We are also doing
something different today which is fish feeds.
If you want to embark on fish farming, you need
feeds. The cost of feeds is 70 per cent the cost of
frozen fish, but we are importing fish feed, when
you can make fish feeds from cassava pellets and
everything else.
"Today, the Nigerian Institute for Marine and
Oceanic Research in Lagos has made a
breakthrough in producing fish feeds from our
own local crops floating feed, which is several
times cheaper than the ones from outside."
Adesina further revealed that the ministry for the
first time in the country had started providing
direct support to fisher men.
"This year we started the GES for the fishermen,
we give fish feed, good stock, fingerlings, nets,
materials they need for cleaning their water and
also support them to have motor boats for their
canoes.
We are also registering our fish farmers so that
we can know them, I believe in planning if you
are not planning, you are planning to fail because
that is why this country never had a database of
its farmers.