REDUCING POVERTY

Surviving the COVID-19 Threat: Aquaculture Sector

Our aquaculture-value-chain project enables fish farmers and processors in the sector—who are limited by inadequate technical and business capacities—to increase their yield, earn more income, and employ more people.

Summary of Outcomes in 2020

4,193 Fish Farmers and Processors Reached

by aquaculture service providers (ASPs) with their adaptive services helped alleviate their most significant COVID-19 induced challenges of access to market, funding, inputs, and information.

NGN 1.6 Billion Leveraged

In new investments into the sector from public and private sectors to implement good pond management practices and technological innovations.

1,524

Fish farmers and processors increased their productivity and sales as a result of accessing the ASPs services and adopting the practices learnt and consequently raised their income by an additional NGN 534.0 million.

932 New Jobs

In the sector facilitated, as they engaged more labor to carry out various pond management activities such as pond preparation, stocking, sorting, feeding, and harvesting.

CHORKOR OVEN: MORE MONEY WITH LESS STRESS AND EXPENSE!

“I am Mrs. Vivian Dada, a fish smoker in Madangho coastal community, Warri South local government area, Delta State. Before, I used the local drum to smoke my fish, and it gave me a lot of stress. When they did a demonstration of the Chorkor oven to us, I bought five (5) of them for my business. The Chorkor oven has really helped me save money because it does not consume a lot of firewood, it does not stress me, and it does not take a lot of time to dry the fish. If I buy a wood of NGN 200,000, it lasts me for one (1) year, whereas if I were using drums, a firewood of NGN 100,000 would not serve me for up to three (3) months. The best part is that the Chorkor oven helped me expand my business as other fishers come to me to dry their fishes with my ovens and pay me. People also bring other produce, like meat and periwinkle, for me to dry with the ovens for a fee. Using the Chorkor oven is making me look younger than I did because it does not stress me like the drums used to do. Other people in our community are copying the use of the ovens now. Just recently, I showed a man in the community whose wife dries and sells crayfish how he can use the Chorkor oven for her business. He was so impressed that he bought four (4) ovens for her. God will bless Yinka Akinpelu (a PIND co-facilitator), who introduced me to the ovens and has been helping me in the business.”

Fish farmers and processors faced a limited inflow of inputs, market access, and access to aquaculture services during the pandemic. They encountered reduced demand for fresh and smoked fish, which led to a glut as hotels, other formal markets, and joints were shut down or operating minimally—leading to a drop in fish prices. The price of fish feed increased, which accounts for two-thirds (2/3) of the production cost. This increase and the reduced demand for fish led to an overall rise in farmers’ production costs. Also, financial institutions limited operations or were shut down, making access to working capital to procure inputs for fish production and loans difficult.

Fish processors in hard-to-reach coastal communities faced more considerable challenges. The restrictions hindered communication and transport to these areas, followed by a hike in boat transport costs when few were available. Service providers could not organize physical training and capacity-building programs for the fish farmers and processors. These trainings are important elements of learning marketing best practices and promoting the sale of inputs to farmers. The few trainings held were limited to 15-20 participants in line with COVID-19 guidelines, whereas there would have been 50-100 participants pre-pandemic. Curfews also disrupted night-time production activities.

To survive the threats, fish farmers and processors deepened their relationship and interaction with aquaculture service providers through communication channels such as phone calls, social media, text messages, WhatsApp, and Zoom. In turn, the service providers helped them gain access to new information. This enabled them to identify new clients and access movement passes, alternative feeds, and funding. Service providers also helped fish farmers adopt the pooling of resources to purchase raw materials in bulk, use social media and phones to reach out to new customers, and link to micro-finance institutions.

Conversely, the ASPs resorted to:

The use of technology:

Increased interactions with clients and provide market information, technical advice, and best practices to adopt.

Leveraging partnerships:

Market actors utilized already existing local structures to reach farmers. For example, feed companies brokered relationships with agro-dealers to ensure that farmers could pick up the feed at a particular time since most were afraid of opening their shops. Service providers also relied on other service providers to reach out to their farmer clients with services.

Logistic services:

Service providers secured an exemption for essential services provided by the government, using this to aggregate demand and move essential agro produce and inputs, such as fish feed.

The introduction of new products and services:

Input companies developed relatively cheap, quality fish feed into the market to meet the farmers' needs at the time—this helped the feed company increase sales. The input companies also issued credit notes to some clients to allow them to sustain their production.

Improved Supply Chain for Quality Fish Seeds

Fish seed, called fingerlings, is an essential input for fish farmers and the use of quality fingerlings directly increases their productivity. As such, ensuring sustainable production so that farmers can have regular access to these is essential.

In 2020, to spur the production of quality fingerlings, PIND worked with selected hatchery operators to increase the knowledge of brood-stock development for other hatchery operators, aquaculture service providers, and fish farming groups via a virtual linkage and knowledge-sharing forum.

PIND went further to work with six (6) private hatchery operators in the three (3) states of Delta, Ondo, and Rivers to raise pure-line broodstock from the Fisheries Society of Nigeria (FISON). Five (5) of the partner hatcheries went on to produce 515,000 fish seeds, and fish farmers accessed 345,500 of

Increased Availability of Fish Smoking Technologies for Coastal Communities for Equity

Improved technologies enable faster and bigger outputs for fish processors. The Chorkor oven and smoking kilns are two (2) efficient fish processing technologies PIND has been promoting through the aquaculture service providers and local fabricators.

Equity—the fair distribution of economic wealth—is an integral part of sustainability. The last-mile coastal communities could easily be left out from accessing the technologies despite being majorly fish farmers. Also, easy, and regular access to the technologies was key to fish farmers enjoying the benefits. Recognizing these two (2) facts, PIND had worked to ensure the technologies reach these hard-to-reach communities in prior years.

In 2020, PIND built out the capacity of more masons and fabricators to produce and sell the two (2) technologies at a profit to fish processors. PIND went further to support service providers to hold demonstrations (in compliance with COVID-19 guidelines) of the technologies in coastal communities to spur their adoption, leading to the purchase and use of 109 technologies in the locality (86 Chorkor ovens and 23 smoking kilns).