Challenges faced by Nigeria’s aquaculture include insufficient quality of fish roe in stocking ponds, lack of technical information for modern aquaculture, poor extension services, a large skill gap between management and technical personnel, lack of fishermen’s cooperatives, poor infrastructure, insufficient government funding and the high cost of fish feed.
The lack of feed ingredients is the most important challenge in Nigeria’s aquafeed production industry. The indirect depreciation of the naira is believed to have had a serious negative impact on the price of raw materials for aquafeeds. In addition, the supply of corn and soybeans is insufficient, and they are also contested by people and livestock.
Nigeria has a population of approximately 175 million, severe malnutrition, lack of adequate protein is the main factor. Currently, Nigeria’s aquafeed industry is experiencing rapid growth. However, production capacity cannot match the increasing aquaculture production, resulting in imported feed accounting for 75% of Nigerian fish farmers’ total demand.
Statistics show that although the production capacity of the Nigerian aquafeed industry declined in the 1980s, it rose sharply in 2000 when the production capacity of 35570 tons of aquatic feed was recorded, while the output was 10,760 tons. It is estimated that Nigeria’s aquatic feed production in 2015 was 647,750 metric tons.
How to Solve This Problem?
It can be seen that if Nigeria wants to achieve self-sufficiency in fish production, Nigeria urgently needs to strengthen aquafeed production. The solution to this problem is that the government provides assistance to the agricultural sector and allocates a larger proportion of funds from the state budget for commercial agriculture. Rewards should also be provided in the areas of fish nutrition, processing and feed formulation to encourage young people to become experts in this field.
Another Way for Fish Farmer is buying a Fish Feed Extruder
Fish feed extruder can be divided into dry fish feed extruder and wet fish feed extruder. The dry-type fish feed extruder does not require a steam boiler and can directly process the material into floating particles. Therefore, the dry-type fish feed extruder is cheap and convenient to use and operate. The wet fish feed extruder is equipped with a speed regulator and a steam boiler, which can fully mature and mix the materials, make the quality of the pellets better, and the output is higher than that of the dry type. Therefore, the wet fish feed extruder is suitable for large-scale feed pellet plants, and the dry fish feed extruder is more suitable for small and medium-sized users or factories.
With a fish feed extruder, you can use cheap local raw materials to produce high-quality feed and reduce feed costs.
This cost-effective machine can process various locally sourced abundant raw materials in Nigeria, such as soybeans, peanut cakes, etc. It can also produce various floating or sinking feed pellets for fish, shrimp, crabs, etc., as well as various pet feeds for cats and dogs. The output per hour can be from 50kg to 4t for your choice. With this fish feed machine, even those who have just ventured into the aquaculture business can afford the feeds for their fish.