Credit: Numel Phiri (Zambia)
Review: Numei Phiri and Abdel Rahman El Gamal (Founder of the website)
The inserted photo is taken in a small-scale fish farm in Zambia. The farm which belongs to a female fish farmer, has a total of 3 ponds; 2 breeding ponds (5mx5m) each and one production pond (20mx25m), the one in the photo.
Three tilapia species are communally cultured in this. These are Red breasted tilapia (Tilapia rendalli), Three spotted tilapia (Oreochromis andersonii),and Green headed breams (Tilapia macrochir). The hatchery is supplying the three species in a mixed form and hence farmers culture the species as received from the hatchery.
Like many fish ponds, the one shown has been dug into the water table thus is not easy to drain it completely. Therefore, the partial cropping is done for particular size. The average marketed fish size ranges from 250g to 300g.
No commercial feed is used in this farm that operates are under extensive management wheras natural food is the only source of nutrition. The production is about 1.4 tons/ha/year.
In general, women do contribute to on farm operations as most of the fish ponds are integrated with vegetable gardens.