Migori county aquaculture stakeholders are struggling to reverse low production of tilapia despite being adjacent to Lake Victoria.
The county is counting on fish farmers, both through cage fish farming in the lake and inland, to try and meet potential of producing 200 metric tonnes of tilapia annually.
Data from the county agriculture department shows in 2020, the county produced only 17 metric tonnes of tilapia both from the lake and registered 1,305 fish farmers with 1,485 fishponds.
“Gone are the days of depending on the dwindling fish stocks in Lake Victoria and our rivers, We have the potential and we can commercialise aquaculture,” Governor Ochillo Ayacko said.
Despite huge deficit of tilapia in Migori which has seen traders importing the fish from outside the county and Tanzania and consumers grappling with high prices, investors in the sector are still few.
“Migori should embrace aquaculture as an important venture to provide employment and income,” he said.
Ayacko was speaking during the Annual Aquaculture Day celebrated in the county last Monday.
Aquaculture Business Development Programme an initiative jointly funded by National government and the International Fund for Agricultural, has been working on reversing the low trend of Nile tilapia production.
The programme, in its fourth year, has so far empowered over 1,300 beneficiaries with predator-control kits, pond liner sheets in areas where soils are porous and gave 690,300 fingerlings.
Lucas Mosenda, the county Agriculture Executive, said through the programme in the last financial year, 145 level one beneficiaries have harvested 17,536 kilos of fish valued at Sh5.6 million.
The county also stocked Silanga, Nyamome and Nyagesese dams with 66,000 fingerlings.
Apart from the ABDP project, Migori has also supplied 450,000 pieces of Nile tilapia fingerlings and three tons of fish feeds to fish farmers across the county.
Equally, the county directorate of fisheries also supplied four cages, 30 harvesting nets, 50 weighing scales and 1,175 life jackets.
George Otieno, a farm manager at Ranenville Fish Farm said they started fingerlings production after observing how the fish farmers suffered just to get the fingerlings at punitive prices, apart from the long distance they covered, sometimes to the neighbouring county.
Ranenville Fish Farm is among the three farms that produce fingerlings in Migori county that have been chosen to mentor fish farmers in Migori county.
-Edited by SKanyara