ICFAG pushes for aquaculture security

The Inland Culture Fisheries Association of Ghana (ICFAG) is requesting all future governments to show commitment in operationalising a scheme and policy it has proposed to save aquaculture development.

The current status of local fisheries and aquaculture, in relation to food security and nutrition, poverty eradication, employment generation, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and riparian community development, Nene Osuagbo I, President of ICFAG, said underscores the need for the Small Scale Aquaculture Production Scheme (SSAPS) to achieve national fish food security and nutrition in the short to long term.

The ICFAG President explained that the natural and business environment was ripe, and the legal, regulatory and technical framework was standard.

Also, he said producer and marketing organisations are well poised, while demand for fish food is very high, though supply is highly limited due to financial, technical, marketing access, infrastructure and other aquaculture business operational costs on the part of the small scale producers.

Based on these observations, Nene Osuagbo I and ICFAG recommended the proposed adoption and implementation of the SSAPS policy to jump-start the local mass production of farm fish by local aquaculture producers.

The SSAPS is a cluster aquaculture production scheme in which small scale aquaculture producers, distributors and a management team are brought together in clusters on a Public-Private-Partnership Platform (PPPP), where the state would provide the hardcore infrastructure, such as production cages, ponds, seed, feed, extension service, land/water and other core means of production as in financial, technical, infrastructural.

With SSAPS, the producer association would take up the production and marketing under pre-determined terms and conditions.

A classic example of SSAPS in Ghana is the Ghana Irrigation Development Authority (GIDA) Scheme, on which local small scale agricultural producers are put into clusters and assisted to produce food in commercial quantities.

ICFAG, proponents of the SSAPS policy, said that the scheme can comfortably takeoff concurrently in the Lower Volta Basin where there is a huge mass aquaculture production and marketing advantage and on GIDA Schemes and later to other identifiable high aquaculture zones nationwide.

The policy, if implemented, would progressively close the local food fish demand supply gap of over 500,000mt/PA and rake in more than over US$200 million which the state uses to import fish annually.

It would also create jobs for over two million riparian youth and women, eradicate rural poverty, enhance rural income and promote rural development.

Additionally, it would lead to the attainment of a progressive fish food security and nutrition as well as other social, political and general economic wellbeing of the local population.

“We want the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development (MOFAD), Fisheries Commission (FC) and Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) and Ghana Irrigation Development Authority (GIDA) to also initiate action on the above policy and see to its logical implementation,” Nene Osuagbo I told Accra File in an interview.

The post ICFAG pushes for aquaculture security appeared first on The Chronicle Online.

Read Full Story