14. The Secretariat reported that:
commercial farms in Zambia are less and less dependent on Government for information and extension services as most are able to use internet for technical information or search for markets, or subscribe to newspapers;
the number of commercial fish farms has dropped due to owners’ age (younger generations reluctant to take up farm ownership when parents retire), co-management problems after privatization, discontinuation of government/donor financial support, restructuring of companies leading to closure and lack of good quality fingerlings in desired quantity;
annual production has also been dropping.
15. Participants noted the following main constraints to sustainable commercial aquaculture in Zambia:
a serious shortage of good quality fingerlings;
lack of aquaculture investment policy (it falls within the Agricultural investment policy);
lack of specific credit facilities for aquaculture enterprises;
very high interest rates (35-40 percent);
lack of reliable information relating to land acquisition and markets and trends in aquaculture;
lack of incentives given to farmers;
the extension and research agents are in most cases not conversant with complex fish production systems often imported by commercial fish farmers thereby providing little or no help to these farmers;
nearly all the aquaculture development projects implemented so far, have targeted small-scale and emergent fish farmers leaving out commercial fish farmers;
the price of the locally produced high protein formula fish feed (pellets) is very high and therefore prohibitive;
the current national economy is weak and the people have very weak buying power; the costs of production are higher for cultured fish than for fish from capture fisheries;
commercial fish farmers lack an official forum for e.g. exchanging information and sharing experiences and the lack of national database on aquaculture, which makes planning in Aquaculture difficult.
16. The Workshop:
identified the need to have legislation indicating clearly where the country stands on the issue of introduction of exotic species;
noted that the problem of high cost of good quality feed renders the industry particularly uncompetitive and needs to be addressed urgently;
pointed out that some methods such as "generic advertising" could be used to increase the price of farmed fish, thereby increasing the competitiveness of aquaculture vis-à-vis capture fisheries.
