Food self-sufficiency through aquaculture
Story by Gay Matambo
FISH farming has become a lucrative and viable enterprise, which has given communities such as the Chipimbi area in Chiredzi District assurance of food self-sufficiency.
A total of 21 resettled communal farmers in the Chipimbi area have ventured into fish farming with the assistance of the government’s development partners.
The farmers who have established two functional ponds with close to 50 000 Tilapia fish in each pond, are supplying the local community and nearby shops.
The communal farmers have also ventured into fish breeding, producing fingerlings for stocking their ponds and for resale to other fish farmers in the area.
Christened, ‘Chaitemura Choseva’, the name sums up how the fish farming project is transforming lives in the area.
The chairman of the Chaitemura project, Mr Shoko said, “We started this project in 2015, three groups benefit from this project and the groups include the disabled group, another group for the elderly and the third group has four people. All in all, we are 21. We have an area where we grow soya beans for the feed. We started harvesting in 2017. When we sell our fish each member gets fish to take home as well. We then sell the rest for us to get money for diesel for the engine and other things we need. The remainder of the money we share. We get a lot of money, from fish breeding.”
Apart from fish farming, members of the project have established nutritional gardens close to the fishponds which are benefitting their families and the elderly in the area.
“We used to struggle to make ends meet but this project had enabled us to fend for ourselves and our grandchildren. We get vegetables from the garden and mealies, what is only needed is to work because if you sleep you die of hunger.”
“It’s only that our engine is not working but we are going to harvest our fish very soon and things will go back to normal because we want to use those funds that we are going to get from selling the fish to fix the engine. We have been able to survive through this project and we are grateful,” said one of the elders.
Meanwhile, as part of initiatives to ensure the growth of the fish farming sector in Zimbabwe, the government has earmarked 150 dams for fingerling stocking during the 2023 to 2024 summer cropping season, with an expected yield of 360 tonnes after eight months of stocking.
