This agroecological practice is a sustainable way to diversify rural livelihoods, in line with the FAO Guidelines for Sustainable Aquaculture

14/06/2024

Traditional rice growers in Nigeria have found that by introducing fish into their fields they can boost their yields and cut costs, which means more money in their pockets to buy food for themselves and their families.

They did so by working with an FAO project to diversify rural livelihoods, which ran from 2021 to 2023 in two areas where most of the population are small-scale rice farmers: Kebbi State in the northwest and Ebonyi State in the southeast.

The project was coordinated by FAO in partnership with the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and the University of Georgia with funding from Mississippi State University, both in the United States of America.

Integrating aquaculture with agriculture is in line with the new FAO Guidelines for Sustainable Aquaculture (GSA), which specifically encourage States to promote this practice in small-scale farming systems as a catalyst especially for poor communities to improve food security and nutrition, increase farm biodiversity and build resilience to climate change.

The challenge

Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) had highlighted that small-scale farmers were having trouble producing enough to cover their basic needs, leading to a high prevalence of food insecurity, undernourishment, and undernutrition.

“A large proportion of the population reported worrying about running out of food, compromising on quality and variety of food, reducing quantities, skipping meals and/or experiencing hunger,” said FAO Senior Fishery Officer Matthias Halwart.

Rice monocropping has limited productivity, and Nigerian farmers often turn to imported agrochemicals to boost yields. This is expensive for them due to disruptions in global fertiliser supply chains and local currency fluctuations, and it also has negative impacts on human and ecosystem health.

Integrated rice-fish farming on the other hand can make fields more productive because the two species enter a symbiotic relationship: by swimming among the rice plants, the fish act as natural pest control agents while their excrement becomes organic fertilizer.

The solution

The project team worked closely with farmers, extension workers, and graduate students from the University of Ibadan to co-create a process for integrating fish farming into existing rice fields at six pilot sites in the two states. The goal was to deliver lasting, culturally acceptable results with a focus on sustainability. 

“We adopted a participatory approach, so the entire initiative became farmer-driven,” recounts FAO Project Coordinator Oluwafemi Ajayi. “They were at the forefront of the process, and this was a big factor in its successful uptake.”

After two production cycles lasting 4-5 months each, rice yields rose by 5 percent and farmer incomes increased by up to 48 percent compared to when they practiced rice monocropping, according to research at the pilot sites.

Not only that, but news of the on-farm trainings and demonstrations had spread through word-of-mouth.

“More and more people kept showing up,” Ajayi said. “The project was initially slated to reach 200 beneficiaries and we ended up with 700, plus many more that we were not able to register officially.”

By the end of the project, farmers at all the pilot sites reported notable improvements in their food security, nutrition, and livelihoods: their diets became more diverse because they integrated fish into their daily meals, and thanks to boosted crop yields they also had more income to buy a variety of foods.

“The farmers expressed a strong willingness to continue practicing these methods and volunteered to share their knowledge with peers in their respective communities,” according to FAO Fishery Officer Austin Stankus.

Farmers are practical: they need to see to believe, because it can take their land, crops and/or livestock years to recover from a production mistake. In Nigeria, farmers became enthusiastic about agroecological rice-fish farming because it was demonstrated to them on plots, where it became readily apparent that this technique was more profitable than traditional monocropping.

“I began rice-fish farming because my farm is my business. Now I eat better at home and make money by selling my crops, which assists my livelihood,” project beneficiary Hajia Fatima Aliu told the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Fish (FIL), which is managed by Mississippi State University and funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The outlook

Based on the huge amount of interest from neighbouring farmers at the pilot sites, FAO has continued to work with the University of Ibadan through the Global Sustainable Aquaculture Advancement Partnership (GSAAP) and other funds to consolidate and expand these activities.

Local authorities have also welcomed the initiative: in Kebbi, the state government is developing a so-called Empowerment Package based on agroecological rice-fish farming and is seeking co-funding opportunities to expand the practice to many more areas, according to Ajayi.

“We were able to demonstrate that this practice can alleviate poverty and provide food security and dietary diversity with minimal impact on the environment, because once you introduce fish into your rice fields you won’t need chemical fertilizers,” he explained.

Evidence of the success has been provided to government stakeholders to encourage consideration of rice-fish farming as a policymaking strategy to deliver national development targets. As well, a knowledge-transfer request was made by Mali to scale up the initiative there, demonstrating the potential for the project to have a global impact.

About the GSA

The GSA were drafted by FAO and its Members through a consultative process that spanned eight years. Their underlying vision is of an aquaculture sector that contributes significantly to a world free from hunger and to the equitable improvement of the living standards of all actors in its value chains, including the poorest.

The GSA are global, voluntary, adaptable, and complementary to existing laws and regulations. They rest on the principles of sustainability, environmental stewardship, non-discrimination, the rule of law, equity and equality, participation, transparency and accountability, and the use of the EAA.

All countries and stakeholders can use the GSA to advance towards more productive, efficient, resilient, climate-smart, and socially and environmentally responsible agrifood systems, in which aquaculture fulfils its potential to meet the increasing demand for safe, nutritious, accessible, and affordable aquatic foods.