Rift Valley nets 604,000 tons of fish

Farmers in Rift Valley have harvested 604,000 tonnes of fish in the last two years. Provincial fisheries officer George Onyango said the harvest was realised from the government’s economic stimulus programme in 30 constituencies. Onyango made the remarks in Kitale during the official opening of a fish farmer’s workshop. “I am happy that as per yesterday, our province has realised these good yields because of embracing modern technology that the Ministry of Fisheries has been campaigning for,” said Onyango.

He said, the ministry of fisheries spent sh.432 million in the province for the programme which hired 90,000 youth under the Kazi Kwa Vijana initiative. He said his department is embracing sex reversed breed whereby female fingerlings are transformed into males through technology for faster growth and good quality fish. “We are teaching farmers to use methyl testosterone hormone for 21 days after the fish attains 12 days to change the sex from female to male, male fish grows faster and matures early apart from gaining more weight than females” said Onyango.

He said Asia, Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia are doing a similar thing which Kenyan fish farmers ought to embrace. Onyango added that his ministry is collaborating with Kenya Marine Fisheries research system to start a fish farmers SMS service to market their products. “We are encouraging farmers to rear fish because the market will be wider because the farmer will only be required to send the product via SMs  to get the buyer” he added. He said fish farming is simple because it only requires small portion of land compared to crop farming which needs large tract of land.