| How farmer turned one-room
fish farm into mega business
By Vincent Ukpong Kalu (egbebereugobere@yahoo.com)
Saturday,
May 5, 2007
Kehinde Samuel Idowu, managing consultant, Aquaseed Fishtechnick
Ltd, says in spite of the initial hiccups that naturally follow
a new enterprise, he has made fortune in his over 15 years
of fish farming business.
Idowu is a fishery graduate of University of Ibadan. After
three and half years stint with indigenous firm where he cut
his professional teeth, he set up his own firm, specialising
in production of fingerlings, feeds equipment, fish pond construction,
recycling system engineering, consultancy, training and seminar.
Learning the hard way
According to Idowu, when he became his own master, it wasn’t
a tea party. Apart from the problem of raissing the capital,
there wasn’t much practical orientation or experience
of what he wanted to do, except the little he gathered in
his brief stay with Ballon, an agric consultancy firm, which
was not even enough to forge him ahead in an area that is
highly technical. "I started very rough. Being a very
technical industry, I had to learn on the job. My resilience
paid off. I started with a small hatchery where I produced
fingerlings. Fingerlings are very hot in the market. Their
production is the major problem in fish farming because it
is highly technical. Table fish farmers pay in advance to
have them. That made me to endure the difficulty."
Turning point
In order to grasp and master the technically in fingerlings
production, Idowu got in contact with companies abroad and
obtained journals and technical papers which he studied and
applied. "Hatchery is the most sensitive and difficult
area in fish farming, except you are technically oriented,
it may not be easy to handle. That is why I concentrated more
in this aspect. What our clients required most were fingerlings
and technical advice. So we concentrated on production of
fingerlings than table fish".
"As people became aware of it, there was the urge to
expand. I expanded the hatchery and equally the market. This
was my turning point. Even, though, many people are into hatchery,
most of them lack the technical know-how."
Great awareness
Idowu says many factors are responsible for the great awareness
in fish farming today in Nigeria. He identified joblessness
as the main one. According to him, fish farming is a business
you can start with very little capital. "Even though,
it is capital intensive, you cannot compare it with the capital
involved in setting up a manufacturing firm."
The environment is changing to the extent that it is difficult
to survive if you don’t have something doing. Hunger,
which is everywhere, has compelled heads of states to meet
and proffer solution to hunger and poverty. They realised
that fish farming is one of the solutions as it is an industry
that requires little capital to set up and within a short
time you break even. Government made it known to people that
it is a sustainable industry with little capital. Everybody
started picking it up.
N50, 000 capital
Idowu says with N50, 000, one can start a fish farming business.
From his experience, the first month you invest that N50,000,
you are likely to get it back if properly managed. The aspect
of fingerlings production requires little capital once you
have the technical knowledge. N5m can set up a medium scale
farm. There has not been large-scale fish farming in Nigeria,
the best we have are medium scale. Large scale farming involves
multi million naira investment.
‘At the inception, I didn’t have N50,000, that
is why I advice school leavers not to wait till they amass
N50,000 before starting off. The point is, fish lives in water
and anything that can contain water can be used to raise them.
You need a male fish and one or two females breeders each
going for about N1,000. With N500 you inject them with hormone,
give them special feed after hatching, you now need the nursery
facilities.
In my case, I bought some planks and engaged a carpenter who
made a box of 4" x 21/2 x 12". I bought waterproof
sheet and laid it inside and then put water. If you can do
the same, you are set to start fingerlings production, With
the two female fishes, you can get up to 5,000 fingerlings
if you intensively manage it. This can fetch you about N50,000
in the market. That is why I said with initial capital of
N50,000 you are likely to get back the money within the shortest
possible time."
These boxes or containers can be assembled anywhere –
in the lawn, garage or backyard.
Going to a swampy area for fish farming is obsolete
"I started from my house. I was living in a flat, nobody
even my co-tenants knew what I was doing. The rooms were used
for fingerlings production. The discharged water goes underground.
My co-tenants never knew that I was working because they never
saw me going out in the morning, except when I was driving
out or a client came. For three years I lived in the place,
the estate agent that gave me the house never knew what I
was doing in the house." Usually, it takes about six
months for fingerlings to mature to table size. If you want
to go into table size production, you need a capital more
than N50,000. On a very small scale, you need N100, 000 to
N150, 000 that will produce over 1,000 pieces in six months.
Youths Help Youths Initiative
Idowu says, except in the media, there is no impact of government’s
poverty eradication programme. ‘When we realised the
lip service of the government in this direction, I created
a programme, Youth Help Youth Initiative. I organise seminars
at a very low cost. I found out that, our academic curricular
is not structured to make us business conscious, which is
why people don’t understand the concept of private enterprise.
After school, to pick up business idea becomes very difficult;
this is the reason why a lot of people are unemployed because
while in school, they believed that the job is waiting for
them. It is no more like that, you have to create job for
yourself. We now hold seminar and give knowledge to people
to be self-employed at a cheap cost. This project is not for
profit. We aim to help by empowering the unemployed, graduates
or school leavers to develop entrepreneurial skills towards
self-employment. It is funded from the sale of Step by step
CD and manual. We are also planning to establish a business
school for fisheries and Agribusiness Entrepreneurs.
We have developed a lot of people that are now self employed.
People have shown enthusiasm especially in the fingerlings
production. Some that have braced the odds are getting results
not only here in Lagos but as far as Imo State.
Bank facilities
Kehinde says from the experience of his client, the much-talked
N50b Agricultural incentive loan is mere paper talk. "I
have a client, who has invested up to N6m into fish farming
and still requires about N2m, he approached his bank about
October last year for this N50b agricultural loan. The impression
given was that within 30 days of application, the loan would
be given. He produced all the requirements including the feasibility
studies I did, up till now he hasn’t obtained a kobo.
Sourcing feeds
Three companies in Nigeria are producing feeds. The ingredients
to make the feeds are here. The only ingredient we don’t
have is fish milk – that is, the protein concentrates.
What we don’t have is the technology to make it like
the imported ones, which come in oil-coated pellets that float
on water for the fish to pick them.
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