Fish farmers wiggle out of poverty

Farmers harvest fish in Limoto, Pallisa District, last week. PHOTO/ NOELINE NABUKENYA
What you need to know:
- The fish farmers use their share, among other things, to invest in individual ventures such as poultry and dairy farming.
In December 2019, a section of Pallisa District residents informed President Museveni during his visit to the Limoto wetland restoration project that they “work for only their stomachs”.
The wetland, located on the Tirinyi-Pallisa Road, is shared by the districts of Pallisa, Kibuku, Budaka, Butebo.
This is how President Museveni got the word ‘Nkolera Kida Kyonka,’ a Lugwere word meaning ‘working for only the stomach.’ It refers to living hand to mouth.
Mr Museveni then urged the locals, most of them rice farmers, who earned less than $135 per capita, to engage in
fish farming, saying it is a lucrative venture that can lift them out of poverty.
To support the locals, the government, through the Ministry of Water and Environment, set up eight fishponds on one acre in Limoto Village, Bolliso 1 Sub-county as a demonstration site, now commonly referred to as Museveni’s farm, around 2022.
In the first and second seasons, the farmers under their umbrella Limoto Tukume Butonde Fish Farmers Association earned little profit due to the high cost of fish feeds. Mr Siraji Gasyodo, the chairperson of the farmers, said in May
2023, farmers decided to outsource local feeds to replace imported feeds in a bid to reduce the cost.
“We are now using chicken offals. We buy a kilogramme of chicken offals at Shs500 and every day, we use 40 kilo-
grammes, which means per feeding, we only use Shs20,000,” he said.
“So we have cut down the cost of feeding the fish,” he added.
Mr Gasyodo said they restocked the ponds for the third season in May 2024 with 29,159 fingerlings and fed them
mostly on chicken offals. The farmers started harvesting last week.
“We have so far made sales of about Shs60 million, but we anticipate to obtain more than Shs80 million if all fish is sold,” he said, adding that a kilogramme of fish goes for Shs9,000.
In previous seasons, the farmers relied on imported feeds. To feed fish per day, they needed six sacks of Kaffiika
animal feed each worth Shs90,000, totalling Shs540,000.
In the first season, May 2022 to February 2023, the 72 farmers produced 15.65 tonnes of fish and obtained
Shs66m.
The farmers bank part of the money into their Sacco as a revolving fund and also share the remaining among
themselves.
In the first season, the fish farmers banked Shs24 in their Sacco account and shared Shs42m and in the sec-
ond season, they kept Shs 37 million in their Sacco account and shared Shs17 million.
The farmers use their share, among other things, to invest in individual ventures such as poultry and dairy farming.
Ms Grace Salamula, a fish farmer and resident, said with the use of cheaper chicken offals, earnings from fish farming will be higher than what they have been getting. She added that she has been able to start poultry farming and a food kiosk
from the money she earned in previous seasons.
“We were rice farmers, but we were not lifting ourselves from poverty. Now, we are improving our lives. I also own a
food kiosk,” she said.
Pallisa, like other districts in Bukedi, has about 88.3 percent of the households still relying on subsistence farming. Government statistics show that Bukedi’s per capita income stands at 43.7 percent, with a GDP per capita of $135 (Shs488,866). Bukedi’s poverty rate is 37 percent.
Ms Zamu Nakato, another farmer, said the government should procure for them a machine to enable them to make feeds at the site.
“This will cut the cost of production but also help us farmers to earn more revenue from the fish project,” Ms Nakato said.
Another fish farmer, Mr Jackson Magino, said they lack a vehicle for transporting their harvested fish to better markets outside the region.
“We also lack proper containers for the harvested fish. This affects us during the selling process, the already harvested fish ends up being given away to avoid it getting spoiled," he said.
Mr Muhammad Samuka, the Pallisa District natural resource officer, said although fish farming is a profitable enterprise, the biggest challenge has been the high cost of the industrial feeds.
“We have been trying to find a way of how we go about this high cost of feed. We have been doing a lot of research and
consultations and we discovered that fish can feed on the intestines of animals,” he said.
Mr Patrick Okotel, the manager of water for production in the eastern region, said Limoto fish farm is one of the alter-
native livelihoods for the people who were evicted from the wetlands.
“We have since built the capacity of the farmers to manage fish and irrigated horticulture farming as part of the government effort to fight household poverty, which was rampant,” he said.
Government plans
He said the government is planning to empower farmers to establish their own fishponds.
“This will help the farmers to establish individual ponds along the wetland where they can independently grow the fish and conserve the environment,” he said.
Ms Esther Nakyese, a fish farmer, explained that they work together to weed grass, remove mud and also shape the sides of the pond dykes eaten by water before restocking the ponds.
She said that pond cleaning is done to kill parasites and predators to catalyse fertility.
Mr Richard Omongole, the senior fisheries officer for Pallisa District, said locals are now willing to leave the wetland if they are provided with profitable alternative livelihoods.
The Pallisa Resident District Commissioner (RDC), Mr Magidu Dhikusoka, said the government would provide a fridge at the site to help the farmers preserve the supplied chicken offals.
He added that the government is also planning to acquire a fish feed-making machine that will enable farmers to make feeds at the site.
About the project
The fishponds were constructed by the Ministry of Water and Environment in 2018 as part of the wetland restoration programme funded by the government in partnership with the Green Climate Fund and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). According to National Agricultural Advisory Services, Uganda annually produces up to 15,000 tonnes of fish from aquaculture.