Daily Monitor, 28 April 2010
According to the Washington based Population Reference Bureau 2009 Data Sheet, Uganda has a total fertility rate of 6.7, a natural increase rate of 3.4, and a population of 30.7 million. Our projected population will be 51.8 million by 2025 and 96.4 million by 2050.
These seem quite frightening projections especially when it is remembered that our food production is not yet really proportionate with the rising national population figures. Not even the size of the territory of Uganda is likely to increase at any one time in the foreseeable future.
Therefore much as some effort ought to be made to check the country’s rapid population growth, the Ugandan farmer is challenged to think hard about how to use the available land resource to produce more food for the ever growing population. Farmers must adopt more productive strategies.
One of the strategies could be to discard such stone age practices as hunting and gathering fish in our lakes. We have exhausted the lakes and the rivers and, since the consumers of fish are increasing, the way to go should be fish farming in the numerous swamps across the country. Farmers should also engage in fish rearing on our lakes and rivers in what is known as cage culture. We must increase food production in every land unit that is allocated to agriculture and at the same time engage in aquaculture.
Mr. Paul Ssekyewa, Chairman of Masaka District Fish Farmers Association, and Managing Director of Ssenya Fish Farms, says that one way to increase farm yields is to integrate fish farming with crop and animal production, especially for farmers living close to swamps and river banks. Crop and animal husbandry farmers must be helped to appreciate the advantages of integrating their activities with fish farming.
Fish is an important cash commodity, harvested about twice every year and it is also a much needed nutritive food for the farming household. He says crop and animal husbandry practiced along fish farming helps to alleviate costs and increases farm profits. “Animal manure, for example, can be used to fertilise fish ponds,” he says.
“Chicken droppings put into fish ponds promote the production of planktons and other natural foods for fish.” Cattle and goats droppings can also be used in the same way to fertilise fish ponds. The practice increases fish yields and the farmer’s profits especially as some of the money that would have been spent on fish feeds is saved. But also the farmer saves some more money that would have been spent on other inputs such as manure for crops as the mud left at the bottom of the fish pond after harvesting fish has been discovered to be very good manure for the crop garden.
Mr Ssekyewa is quick to point out however that all application of animal manure in fish ponds should be done under the guidance of a veterinary or an agriculture extension service provider. He says there are specific manure application rates which should be observed by the farmer for best yields. While fish farmers are encouraged to buy feeds from farmers’ shops they are advised at the same time to devise a cost effective way of using farm wastes, to make efficient use of resources within the farm and to make use of all locally available alternative feeds. The practice cuts costs and makes fish farming a lot easier and more profitable.
Fish ponds are water reservoirs and water from the ponds can be used to irrigate the crops. The animals and the chicken can drink the fish pond water. Some crop’s leaves can be fed directly to fish and some green fodder grown along the edges of fish ponds and wherever else to mitigate soil erosion can be used to make composite for fertilising the ponds.
On his farm at Ssenya where he keeps cattle and goats Mr. Ssekyewa has over 30 fish ponds. He is mainly engaged in fish seed production but recently he added rice growing as another farm activity and it is interesting how he has integrated rice growing with fish farming. While maintaining the required water level in the rice paddies he has dug channels around the paddies in which he raises fish. This is one way in which a rice farmer can increase his income and his family’s food security. He will harvest the rice and at the same time he will have fish.
Farmers who live close to food processing industries or grain mills can take advantage of some by-products from the factories or mills such as maize bran, chicken offals, discarded cassava or maize or millet flour, or malwa residues and such non poisonous food waste.
Source: Daily Monitor
