Fishing for big Markets
By Kimberly Castillo (Express).You don’t necessarily need a fishing boat to take you to see what the future of fishing looks like.
At the invitation of tilapia farmer Christian Penco, the Business Express hitched a ride in his muddied Hilux van and travelled along a bumpy road off the beaten track in Longdenville to his tilapia farm.
From the outside, Penco’s farm looks pretty ordinary, but it’s what is happening on the inside that is amazing - a clean, efficient, smooth running tilapia facility.
In rows of three, there are 600 gallon tanks and 2,000 gallon tanks.
For this tilapia producer, this is not child’s play.
Penco engages in what he calls intensive tilapia farming.
It’s no wonder therefore that he runs a tight operation.
To make the most profit from this business, Penco makes sure that his farm is well maintained.
Water flows into the oxygenated tanks. To prevent the water from overflowing the excess water flows into skimmers which syphon off all floating material. The water is also pumped into a mechanical filter which extracts the fish waste before the water flows into the biological filter, where bacteria breaks down the nitrates into nitrites.
Then the filtered water is pumped back into the tanks, ensuring that the water supply is fairly clean.
Each day, Penco measures out the feed and has different feeds for various sizes of fish, from fingerlings (baby tilapia) to adult fish.
Charts which keep a track of feed hang at the side of each tank.
At the moment, Penco has 3,000 pounds of tilapia (available for sale) swimming in his tanks.
He knows this time of year - Christmas- where pork and ham reign as king, is the off season, but from January straight into Lent that’s when sales pick up and things at the farm get hectic.
By then Penco’s farm will be fully stocked with around 10,000-15,000 pounds of tilapia.
Tilapia farming is not rocket science, he repeats over and over again, the information on how one can set up a fish farm is readily available for anyone willing to give it a try.
Penco has been farming tilapia for a shorter period of time than other farmers and a lot of what he has learnt in three years has come from trial and error and experimentation.
When he began his own farm, he at first lost 2,000 pounds of fish because of an electricity blackout.
He also experimented with different tanks and found that for his pilot project, the 600 gallon tanks were too deep and narrow whereas the 2,000 gallon tanks had more lateral area and less depth, allowing for a better exchange of oxygen.
He has also received a lot of technical support and assistance from several people including the Fisheries Division.
Penco says the government does have certain agencies with extension officers to facilitate tilapia farmers.
But to take tilapia farming from a mere project to a thriving business, one has to remember four things, said Penco: oxygenation, filtration, quality of fingerlings and quality of feed.
Fish farming has been practised for hundreds of years but now more than ever it is has become increasingly popular.
Fish stocks are declining yet there needs to be a way of satisfying the global demand for fish protein.
Fishing today is now more efficient that ever before.
Fishing vessels are outfitted with tracking technology like fish finders, depth sounders, marine radios and GPS systems.
It’s inevitable, says Penco - overfishing which is enabled by state of the art technology will result in a decrease in fish stocks and an increase in the cost of fish. And so this is why fish farming has been considered the future of fishing. Fish farming cannot replace fish stocks but it does two things- it satisfies the appetite and demand for fish while allowing fish populations to rebound.
At home local groceries and restaurants are supplied with Chinese tilapia by foreign markets- this is a challenge to farmers hoping to supply the local market. Penco says the red and silver tilapia fish he breeds, farms and sells are of a superior quality.
“People buy tilapia elsewhere and then they come to my farm and they say it’s like chalk and cheese. There is no comparison. When people come to my farm, they get a chill-kill fish,” he said.
Penco ‘purges’ his fish days before the actual sale.
This refers to the process in which the fish are placed in fresh water with no feed to allow the fish to flush out all waste and toxins.
Then on the morning of the sale, he takes the fish out and puts them on ice. That is what you call a ‘chill kill’ fish.
“You can’t get any fresher than that. The nutrients in the fish do not diminish through freezing or anything like that so what you get is an extraordinary product,” he said.
Can local tilapia farmers supply the market?
The desire is there, says Penco but farmers need incentives to get to that point.
“I wish the Minister of (Food Production) in his capacity would consider subsidising the cost of feed,” he said.
Feed accounts for 60 per cent of the cost of his tilapia.
If tilapia farmers get a subsidy on feed, Penco says he and the other tilapia farmers can give foreign suppliers a run for their money and provide a better, tastier quality of fish at competitive prices.
“Give farmers a quantitative subsidy and leave them to do the rest. Your major costing outside of feed is aeration, your recirculation pump and your tanks and the cost of these things will vary according to the size of your farm. There are expensive mechanisms available but they are not necessary in a tropical environment,” he said.
But getting a good return investment on his fish will depend to a large extent on what they are being fed and so this is why a subsidy on a good quality, consistent feed is so important, he said.
Fish farming has its share of critics who say the diet of farmed fish make them less healthier than their wild counterparts. Critics also contend that farming fish in a restricted area increases stress levels among the fish and make them more susceptible to parasites and diseases.
But Penco says farmed fish are as good if not superior to ocean fish which are subjected to high levels of mercury and toxins. He also keeps a well maintained farm with tanks which are filtered regularly, thereby limiting the occurrence of parasites and diseases.
The farm in Longdenville is what he considers his ‘pilot project’. He is on the brink of building a larger farm and eventually wants to export.
Deputy chairman of the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) Christopher Charran says the ADB is committed to helping farmers like Penco financially.
“The government believes it is not just a matter of giving people like Mr Penco the opportunity to have the tilapia, but also a processing plant - this is important to make sure it reaches the customer. We could produce, we know that, but what is the next step? Processing and getting the fish into the customers’ hands,” he said.
In an effort to eliminate the ‘middleman’, Charran said through various initiatives the ADB is creating customers for the farmers.
“Most of the farmers do all the hard work, there is always a middle person who gets the profit from the work that they do so what we’re trying to do is give the farmers the opportunity to actually get that additional revenue for all their hard work,” said Charran.
Christian Penco feeds fish at his farm. The fish are fed one to two times a day. —Photo: James Wallace
