Gabriel Nii Adjin Lartey, the Chief Executive Officer of Lartman Farms, believes that the timing is right to create an Aquaculture Development Fund for fish farmers in Ghana and has urged young people to start catfish farms in order to promote sustainable economic growth.
He said that Ghana has all the prerequisites for producing catfish, including the weather, water, soil, and market, with the exception of funds to occasionally launch the business.
“I believe that catfish farming will play a critical role in food security, job creation and youth unemployment, yet in Ghana, the youth seems disinterested in it.
“The vision is to train interested and passionate individuals with knowledge on how to produce quality fish for their communities and the country as a whole and also see the aquaculture sector as a good source of income in an expanding market.
“I believe sustainability could be ensured by setting up monitoring bodies that would be physically present on-site to monitor feeding practices and the introduction of other farm inputs rather than relying on reports from farmers that may not represent the reality on the ground” he said.
He made these remarks during a two-day training organized in Accra to train about 30 small scale fish farmers from different parts of the country to equip them with the requisite skillset on the practicality of setting up and managing their own fish farms.
The Chief Executive Officer of Chamber of Aquaculture Ghana Jacob Adzikah added that it’s time government and private sector help sustain the Aquaculture industry which will help increase fish production in Ghana.
“It’s time to increase budgetary support for investment in the aquaculture sector; the move can partly address the youth unemployment situation, given the enormous potential of the industry which remains untapped.
“The sector has the capacity to grow over 180,000 metric tonnes per annum but at the moment, the average production is around 64,000 metric tonnes, so the gap is just too huge and we can still do better because we have the best ecosystem for fish production at the moment.
“This training is to help equip and upgrade the knowledge of these 30 small scale fish farmers from different parts of the country; sustainability of aquatic food systems is interwoven between feed and nutrition, breeding technology, disease management and low-impact production to improve efficiency” he said.