An international non-profit research organization known as WorldFish has trained small scale fish farmers in Nigeria on how to increase their productivity and boost their profits.

The organization had during the earlier training demonstrated fast growing diseases resistant tilapia, catfish, and others species of fish to the trainees before teaching them about value addition to the commodities in order to prevent post-harvest losses.

The Aquaculture Technology Transfer Officer, WorldFish, Mrs. Ajibola Olaniyi, told our correspondent in an interview on the sidelines of the training held in Lagos recently, that apart from boosting food security, increased production of fish would create jobs as well as wealth for millions of people.

She said there were many opportunities in aquaculture and other segments of agriculture which could be explored to make life better for small scale farmers on the whole continent.

Olaniyi said, “Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation which is funded by the African Development Bank is mainly about transferring knowledge to the operators to boost their productivity and to make Nigeria self-reliant, especially in fish production and even export.

“We are working in 14 states in Nigeria now and the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture Youth-In-Agribusiness is our focal point. We seek to boost the production capacity of aquaculture value chain actors. We are seeking to increase fish protein consumption and enhance sustainability across the value chain.

“There is a huge number of malnourished children and even adults and fish which is a good source of protein can be used to address this problem. Fish powder can be added into children’s food including infants. Women can take up the challenge to increase fish production in Nigeria and all over Africa.”

The Project Implementing Officer, IITA Youth-In-Agribusiness, Ifedayo Ibironke, said apart from teaching farmers on the need to get quality fingerlings, they were also trained on production of locally formulated feeds, in order to reduce cost and make their commodities competitive.

He said 70 active players were trained on getting fast growing disease-resistant tilapia fingerlings while 40 were trained in value addition, packaging and export of fish.

The Chief Executive Officer of Frijay Consults, Mr Alfred Uwheraka, who trained participants on fish processing, packaging and export, said there were so many business opportunities in export.

Source: Punch Newpaper

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