Success through Commercial Aquaculture

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Having properly set up her business now, she is happy with her steady production and income source. 

By Md. Zamal Uddin

Hamida Begum is a successful female farmer who established her name as a female aquaculture entrepreneur in Gournadi Upazila of Barisal district. After the untimely death of her husband, the income from his business and labor stopped. Due to this she could only rely on her betel leaf garden and three ponds as a source of income. However, at the time these resources were failing to generate enough income to cover the food and education expenses for her family.

This is when she realized that she had to make better, more efficient use of the little resources she had at her disposal. Despite that realization, she still had to figure out how to maintain her family life while coming up with a suitable income source which would support the family and her children’s educational costs. Around the same time she became a member of a farmer training group for commercial aquaculture organized by a USAID supported Aquaculture for Income and Nutrition (AIN) project in December 2013. Through this program she received eight hands-on-training sessions on commercial aquaculture. This training gave her the right motivation to start culturing Vietnamese Climbing Perch, locally called Koi. She started her new venture in a pond of 28 decimal out of her three ponds of total 160 decimal in 2014.
Hamida stocked 150,000 Climbing Perch fingerlings in a grow-out pond in July, 2014. 55 days later she was able to start selling the largest fish she had and could use the regular income to buy more feed, which reduced her need for capital. She completed her first final harvest after 4 months by the end of October, 2014. She started Koi fish culture with the help of USAID-AIN technical support some time afterwards which helped her produce 121 kg/decimal in her 28 decimal pond. Her profits amounted to an extraordinary Tk 220,200 from an investment of Tk 89,000. In recognition of her exemplary performance in Koi culture in 2014, she was awarded with a National prize by the Department of Fisheries during the National Fish Week-2015. The prize was handed over to her by the Prime Minister in July 2015.
During 2015, Hamida also expanded her Koi cultivation from one pond to two ponds, while using the third pond for Tilapia culture. She produced a total of 15,339 kg fish (both Koi and Tilapia), for which the expenses were Tk 1,341,220, the value of the sold fish was Tk 2,300,800; which gave her a net profit of Tk 959,580. During the culture period she used 18,594 kg fish feed, which she bought from the local bazar.
Having properly set up her business now, she is
happy with her steady production and income source. Not only does this help her cover her livelihood cost but it also pays for the educational costs of her children. She was able to learn the Koi culture techniques such as pond preparation, proper stocking density, feed management, disease and hazards management, marketing, etc. from her field training sessions and follow up staff support programs from the AIN project. Hamida mentioned that, “there is no alternative to technical knowledge and training for successful commercial aquaculture and I worked accordingly to make my pond a success.” She has improved her standard of living through aquaculture and her success has even motivated her to participate as a “Member” in the forthcoming election of the Union Parishad.
She also mentioned that she is grateful to USAID’s Aquaculture for Income and Nutrition Project for their continuous technical support and linking with different ‘quality seed and feed sources’ which has contributed to achieving her success.

This article was published with permission from WorldFish.

 

 

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