25 Aug 2020

 Minister of Agricultural Development and Food Security,Dr Edwin Dikoloti said there was potential and opportunities in fish farming considering a booming culture of eating fish in urban areas.

He was speaking during a familiarisation tour of Mmadinare Fish Hatchery recently where he said because of huge demand there was the need to focus on increased production.

“We are lucky to have experts at our disposal that can help and guide us to contribute to the extension researcher farmer linkage because without that you cannot realise your true output from your production,” said Mr Dikoloti.

He said he was aware that the project had not quite taken off, hence the familiarisation tour and advised that an output based approach to production had to be adopted.

He said the ministry was developing a proper Botswana model of fish farming, ‘Since we are pushing for integrated farming, which lacks this strong component of fish farming to complete the cycle’.

He said tit was important to influence finance to move towards fish production by setting targets for CEDA to say that a certain percentage should be allocated to fish farming or the value chain of fish farming.

He highlighted that farmers should know that farming was science and that there was dire need for farmers to have strong linkage to extension workers and researchers.

“In every production one does, you can never succeed without a strong extension agent researcher farmer linkage, it is the key to both animal and crop production, it is important to consider this,” said  Dr Dikoloti.

He highlighted the importance of research and development citing that it was a better approach to reduce the import bill. He said within the fish value chain there were lot of linkages that people could benefit from, citing an opportunity in manufacturing fish feeds which had not been tapped.

He said Botswana Agricultural Marketing Board would look at the opportunities that existed within the fish value chain, mentioning that fish equipment was also imported from outside and explained that  when finalised, the Botswana model  should mitigate such challenges.

Briefing the minister and his entourage, acting principal scientific officer, Ms Yolada Lekgabe explained that Mmadinare Fish Hatchery started in 2007 with the mandate to promote and develop fish farming.

She explained that the hatchery breeds fingerlings to sell to anyone who wanted to venture into fish farming and to stock dams that already had fish, new dams, community dams and others in an effort by government to alleviate the intensity of fishing in fish natural habitat. 

Furthermore, She said another mandate was to breed the fingerlings for educational and research purposes by encouraging schools to have fish ponds and facilitating fish farming from grass roots level.

“We also encourage tertiary institutions to utilise this facility to conduct research here to develop fish strains found here as they bring expertise based on their research,” said Ms Lekgabe. She highlighted that since BUAN intended to introduce a fish farming course, the hatchery might see an influx of students coming in to continue this objective.

Ms Lekgabe said the facility acted as a demonstration site adding that the facility will from time to time conduct short trainings depending on the availability of resources. She decried that the hatchery was experiencing a challenge since the production plant was not operational since renovation in 2018.

“We are currently operating without our production plant but utilizing our ponds,” said Ms Lekgabe. She said the facility’s initial capacity was to produce 500 000 fingerlings a year but was currently at almost 100 000 fingerlings a year. ends