Baker, J.D.

English

Aquatic Commons

Preliminary study on the spread of aquaculture technologies between farmers
in Southern Malawi
Jodie Desiree Baker
World Fish Center, Box 229, Zomba, Malawi
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Introduction
Over the past few years of Malawi has experienced
a shortage of food due to various reasons including
drought, excessive rains, and poor macro-economic
policy procedures. Integrated agriculture and aqua-
culture (IAA) is said to improve farm resilience to
drought and farm diversification resulting in in-
creased whole-farm productivity, household income,
household food security and nutritional status of un-
der-five children (Jamu et aL, 2002). Hence, the Ma-
lawi Department of Fisheries in collaboration with
the Japanese International Cooperation Agency
(JICA), and the World Fish Center, is encouraging
farmers adopt fish farming through IAA participatory
research and extension program.
While the benefits of IAA are manifold, Tshiunza et
a!. (2002) notes that "one way of determining the
success of an innovation is to assess the level and rate
of its adoption as well as the rate at which such an
innovation spreads among the target population!
area". It should be noted however, that in the early
stages of the spread of an innovation, extension work-
ers play a crucial role. On the other hand, extension
services may be more expensive than transmission of
a technology through farmer-to-farmer model. This
42
study was conducted to measure the extent to
which fish farming technologies do spread beyond
the fisheries extension workers, the type of tech-
nologies that are being passed along and to assess
the quality of information that is being transferred
from one farmer to the other.
Methodology
The study was conducted between Novembe'
2002 and February 2003 in villages of three dis1
tricts in Southern Malawi; Mulanje, Zomba and
Machinga. Fifty-five (55) fish farmers were ran-
domly selected from NAC's database; 11 fish farm-
ers came from Mulanje, 23 from Zomba, and 21
from Machinga districts. The sample consisted of
44 male and 11 female fish farmers.
Extended conversations were undertaken with
the farmers while simultaneously completing a se-
ries of questions on a semi-structured question-
naire. To thoroughly obtain all information on par-
ticipating farmers, background information that had
been missed during conversations was gathered
from the available information that was collected
for RESTORE software program (Lightfoot et al.,
1999) during the NAC extension program.
Aqua-Fish Teck Rep0 Issue No: 2, Nov 2003
The first part of the questionnaire had questions that
intended to gather personal thta including age, gen-
der, education level, marital status, and home loca-
tion. In addition; data were collected on number of
ponds, time when the farmers started fish farming and
income of the farmers. To measure the quality of in-
formation that was being transferred, the level of suc-
cess was compared between farmers. Success was
indicated by the level of income generated from fish
farming. A multiple regression analysis was run to
determine if level of fish farming, number of ponds,
number of year's fish farming, and farmers age and
education correlated with income of the fish farmer.
The second part of the questionnaire was meant to
obtain information on the second fish farmer (herein
referred to as secondary fish farmer) who had been
taught by a fish farmer (primary fish farmer, that is,
the one who was taught by an extension worker) in
question. The information about the type of the aqua-
culture technology that was passed along was also
collected.
Results and Discussion
Reasons for lIsh farming
Seventy five percent (75%) of the fish farmers said
that they grew fish for both food security and income
generation, while 11% and 9 % said that they grew
fish for home consumption and solely for income
generation, respectively. The rest (5%) gave "water
for irrigation" as reasons for fish farming (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Main reasons for fish farming
Adoption of fish farming and income generation
On average, the respondents had adopted fish
farming about 8 years before this study. Out of the
55 farmers, 37 made a profit from fish farming,
whereas 17 did not make any profit while two of
them could not tell whether they made profit or not.
The average income generated from fish farming
was MK 11 118.97 (approximately 125.00 USD)
per annum, with more cash income from farmers in
Zomba (MK 17 950.29, approximately $199 USD)
seconded by farmers in Mulanje (MK 8317.78, ap-
proximately $92 USD), and finally Machinga (MK
5283.33, approximately $59 USD) districts (Figure
2).
Figure 2: Annual income generated from small scale
fish farming in Mulanje, Zomba and Machinga dis-
tricts
On average, fisheries extension workers made
19 visits (range 0-72) to farmers per year, but vis-
its to males were on lower (17) than to females (25)
per year. Fifteen percent (15%) of the farmers
were not visited by extension workers for the
whole year (Table 1).
oth food (75%)
'd income
0rOOd only (11%)
lncome only
(9%)
I Other (5°Io)
Table 1. Number of visits (per year) among extension workers and fish farmers
1o of visits to farmers
y extension workers
tb, of farmers to visit
he field station
bo, of visits to farm-
rs by othet fish farm-
rs
tbo, of farmers to visit
)ther fish farmers
Male
Female
Total
17
25
19
3.2 12.9
1.6 10.4
2.8 12.4
17.2
12.3
16.2
43
20000
15000
10000
S
5000
OMuI
Zomba
niga
Aqua..Fish Tech Rep. Issue No: 2, Nov 2003
On the other hand, on average, farmers made about
3 visits (range 0-24) to their field station per year and
on average, males made more visits (3) than females
(2) during the same period. This gender difference
may be occurring due to socio-cultural influences
where men are more mobile and often work away
from the home than women. Forty six (46%) percent
of the farmers had never visited the fisheries field
station to seek assistance on fish farming activities
(Table 1).
On average, farmers received 12 visits (range, 0-48)
from other fish farmers for assistance while 36 % of
the farmers reported no visits from other fish farmers.
Similarly, fish farmers made 16 visits (range, 0-48)
annually to other farmers to seek for assistance, In
total, 77 % of the farmers interviewed visited other
fish farmers to receive assistance. While 82 % of the
male fish farmers visited other fish farmers, only 57%
of female fish farmers visited other fish farmers for
assistance (Table 1).
While farmers got information on fish farming
through visits by, or to other fish farmers as well as
by extension workers, the majority (69%) of the
fish farmers preferred receiving assistance from
fisheries extension workers over fellow farmers.
The rest (37%) preferred receiving assistance from
fellow farmers to fisheries extension workers.
Most farmers felt that they would gain more accu-
rate information from extension workers than from
other farmers.
Spread of aquacnfture awareness and dissemi
nation
Twenty-nine percent (29%) of the respondents
were categorized as primary fish farmers, meaning
that they received information on how farm fish
from extension workers, 60% were categorized as
secondary fish farmers meaning that they received
information from primary and the remaining 11%
were tertiary fish farmers (those that were taught
fish farming by secondary fish farmers) (Figure 3).
Fijore 3levels of aquacuRure for fifty-five smafi Sc
farmers interviewed from Mulanje, Zomba, and M
D Primary
0 Secondary
0 Tertiary
Table 2: Technologies most commonly transmitted between fish farmers in Southern Malawi
Fond management
.
{AA technologies i'ingerliag and
fish selection
ond construction Jther
Fingerling manage-
meat in hapas and
breeding ponds
Use of organic manure
mnd inorganic fertilizers
Fingerling selec-
ion for pond
earing
ish pond pegging,
onstruction and
[esign
fransportation of finger-
ings on long distance for
stocking fishponds
Fry and fingerling
reproduction
Jse of mud pond for
Eërtilizing vegetable gar-
lens
Suitable fish se-
lection for pond
ulture
Tilapia rendalli seed mul-
tiplication for pond culture
Polyculture of fish in
ponds
Use of fertilizers, water
and manure in IAA with
nops, livestock and
poultry
Problems faced by fish
farmers
Monosex of all male i'ish integration with rice
:ulture
inrming records and book
Methods of harvest-
gs________
fish integration with
iegetable culture
'ishponds and family
iealth
Fish production cy-
cles and feeds
44
AquaFish Thch Rep Issue No: 2, Nov 2003
Since the data indicates that the majority of fish
farmers are secondary, it may be suggested that fish
farming is spreading more through farmer-to-farmer
than through extension worker-to-farmer transmis-
sion. This view should be cautiously taken as the
sample size of the study was relatively small.
Out of the sample 58% had taught others although
only 22 out of the 55 could produce names of those
that they had taught. The 22 fish farmers taught 134
other people (on average 6 people) on how to fish
farm. From this we can say that each farmeris teach-
ing fish farming to an average of 6 people.
The technologies that were most commonly trans-
mitted between fish farmers are presented in Table 2
and were categorized into five main areas (1) pond
management (2) integration of agriculture and aqua-
culture (3) fingerling and fish selection (4) pond con-
struction and (5) other, which included technologies
that do not fit in the previous categories.
Quality of information that is transmitted from
farmer-to-farmer
Multiple regression analysis showed that the five
dependant variables (number of year's fish farming,
number of ponds owned, age, and education of fish
farmer) did not significantly correlate with income
(R2=O.261), implying that income did not increase or
decrease at various levels of fish farming; as the level
of fish farming increases (from primary to secondary
to tertiary...) the level of income is stable. This may
suggest that the quality of information being transmit-
ted may be consistent for primary, secondary and ter-
45
tiary farmers.
In summary therefore, although preliminary, re-
suits of this study suggest that there may be varia-
tion in income from fish farming due to location;
that farmer-to-farmer technology transfer play a big
role in dissemination of aquaculture technologies
and should therefore be encouraged and enhanced;
that female fish farmers are less mobile than male
fish farmers in sourcing fish farming information
and should therefore be targets for extension vork-
ers; that the quality of information disseminated
between farmer-to-farmers may be comparable to
information disseminated between extension
worker to farmer. The latter, however requires fur-
ther investigations using other dependent and inde-
pendent variables.
References
Lightfoot, dive; Bimbao, Maiy Ann P; Lopez,
Teresita S.; Villanueva, Farlyz Felix D; Orencia,
Emma Luisa A; Daisgaard, Jens Peter T;
Gayanilo, Felimon C. Jr.; Prein, Mark; and
McArthur, Harold J. Jr. 1999. Research Tool for
Natural Resource Management, Monitoring and
Evaluation (RESTORE): Field Guide, vol 1.
ICLARM Malaysia.
Tsbiunza, M; Lemchi, J; Ezedinma C; and Tenk-
ouano, A. 2002. Spread of Cooking Bananas
(Musa spp., genome ABB) in a Traditional Plan-
tain-Growing Area in Southeast Nigeria, Tropi-
cultura. 20, 2: 64-69.



Preliminary study on the spread of aquaculture technologies between farmers in Southern Malawi

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Preliminary study on the spread of aquaculture technologies between farmers in Southern Malawi

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