Fish farmers in Lagos State have stressed the need for enhanced research and development to increase value addition opportunities in the aquaculture sector for enhanced revenue generation and export opportunities.
The Vice President, Lagos State Catfish and Allied Farmers Association (LASCAFAN), Mr Olatoye Fajimi, said a lot of products in the aquaculture sector remained untapped due to lack of research and development.
Fajimi, however, said to boost revenue generation in the catfish farming, local farmers are beginning to tap into the endless possibilities of value addition.
“In consideration of the aquaculture value chain, there are a lot of things one can do when it comes to fish farming.
“It ranges from raising the parent stocks to growing fish in the farms, to processing and then product development.
“It is in the product development aspect that we need a lot of young people and entrepreneurs because there are a lot of product that we can develop from our fish.
“In value addition, we can produce catfish powder, have the wet fillets in frozen form and the dried fillets. We can produce fish flakes for exports and have some of our members even turning catfish into the fish ‘killishi or peppered catfish’.
“We have also formulated a fish cracker. So the possibility of expanding the value-chain is endless,”Fajimi said.
According to him, catfish has a lot of oil in the visceral section that can be turned into fish oil. Welcome everybody
“We have the oil. Catfish has a lot of oil in the visceral section, which we are now turning into fish oil for industrial purposes,” Fajimi said.
The LASCAFAN boss reiterated on the association’s efforts to boost the marketing strategies of local farmers for export income.
“Then, when it comes to the marketing side of it, we are trying to develop what we call the B to B (Business to Business) and the B to C (Business to Consumers) marketing model where we will be able to approach other businesses that need fish like restaurants, hotels and lounges, business to business, kind of relation, then business with direct consumers.
“We are also trying to target direct consumers of our product, so that it can be readily available and affordable, and they can have fish in fresh forms so it will not be still.
“There are a lot of export potential. We have Nigerians all over the world who desire to have food made from home, and Nigerian catfish is done in very unique ways.
“That is why we are standardising our operations from the farm to the processing centres, so that we have standard processing facilities and technologies that are export ready, so that our product can be accepted at the European Union, the US and across the world,” he said.
On his part, the Chief Executive Officer, Aquarius Pisces Ltd., Mr Lameed Olaoluwa, noted that there are more rooms for improvement in value addition of the sector.
Olaoluwa said there was a little improvement in enhancing fisheries/aquaculture value chain but we still have a long way to go.
“The fish we rear in Nigeria is majorly catfish, where we have the pure clarias, and we have the hybrid, which is heteroclarias.
“Most times, these fish are cultivated for direct consumption or processed through smoking for consumption.
“However, we now engage in modern processing of the fish with ovens and kilns which reduces the hydrocarbon deposit on the fish.
“The way most ovens are fabricated currently, you do not see smoke go directly to the fish, and that is why you see the product is cleaner compared to the old kind of catfish we are used to, which is always very dark.
“As part of value addition, we gut the fish appropriately, which is the most hygienic way that could make it last for months,” he said.
Olaoluwa disclosed that fish oil would boost revenue generation for the sector when properly harnessed.
“We can make the harvesting of fish oil a revenue generating avenue for the sector. However, it is not just extracting the oil, we have to consider the hygiene around the oil.
“Hygiene in the sense that the oil still needs to go through some laboratory work. We must purify it to see how healthy it is for human consumption.
“There is a process that you go into in the refining of the oil to make it useful for human consumption. We can also use fish oil as a by-product for feed milling.
“There are various aspects of catfish that can be harnessed for increased revenue for the farmer. From blast freezing, to packaging of the fillets and dry flakes for exports. The opportunities in the value-chain are enormous,” he said.
NAN/Oyenike Oyeniyi