Engineer turns fishing hobby into profitable venture

By MANGOA MOSOTA

Dressed in green overalls, he bends over a pond to set a net to catch fish. The six-foot tall farmer practices his aquaculture engagement deftly, and nothing betrays he is also an engineer.

Luke Kuundu is arguably one of the leading fingerling producers in Nyanza Province, with at least 30,000 fingerlings of tilapia, and 60,000 fingerlings of mudfish annually.

He began the venture as a hobby five years ago, a decision that turned out right. The happy fish keeper harvests over 3,000 mature fish yearly.

"I started fish farming as a hobby and then it developed into an economic enterprise," says Kuundu, 59, who retired from one of the country’s parastatals a few years ago.

The entrepreneur, who also runs an electrical engineering firm, bought an acre and a half of land in 1999 in Uranga, Gem District, for crop farming, but after several poor harvests, opted for fishing.

His main market for the fish is Luanda town, 30km from Kisumu. He diligently spends his time at the ponds every week day – from 7am to 6pm. The returns are sweet: the proceeds amount to over Sh300,000 annually, after factoring in expenses.

Returns on investment

The man from Kiima, Emuhaya District, has a modest hatchery where he breeds fries (catfish young) for two weeks in basins, before moving them into one of his three ponds, where they take ten days to grow before they are ready for sale.

He has five basins, each accommodating 2,000 fries. He supplies the fingerlings and fries to various parts of Nyanza, Western and Rift Valley Provinces, with the Ministry of Fisheries being his major client. The fish farmer bought the land 11 years ago for a paltry Sh150,000 where he practices aquaculture.

Apart from fish, Kuundu also tills the land, planting pawpaw and maize; and rears a cow at the farm situated about 15km from his home, where he employs three farm workers to manage it. He has dug two linear ponds, and plans to furnish the floor with PVC material as a measure to overcome the loss of fingerlings as a result of mud.

"The PVC will ensure minimum fingerlings are lost. The mud floor has led to loss of almost half of the fingerlings," says the father of six, adding that his first pond cost him Sh70,000.

He got his returns on investment within three years. But the venture faces a number of challenges, including predation, where birds and monitor lizards gain access into the ponds to eat the fish. He says Sauri Millennium Villages Project (SMVP) has supported fish farmers in capacity building and provision of equipment such as air ration pumps.

SMVP is among the more than ten villages in Africa under the aegis of the UN and financially supported by several organisations and individual philanthropists.

The village defined Government administrative areas are aimed at showcasing that the eight Millennium Development Goals can be achieved by 2015.

Willy Diru, the agriculture coordinator at SMVP says when the project started to support fish famers in the area five years ago, there were only 50 ponds with less than 50 farmers engaged in the activity.

Fish processor

Diru says presently there are 240 fish farmers with a total of 440 ponds, and over 2.5 million fingerlings supplied by five farmers within the cluster. He says access to enough fingerlings is a challenge because of the small number of farmers engaged in production of young fish.

Diru’s colleague, Tabu Anyinyah, who is the enterprise coordinator, says plans are at an advanced stage to open a fish processor at a market service centre, situated at Yala.

"The processor will ensure middlemen do not take advantage of the perishability of fish and buy the product at throwaway prices. The farmers will negotiate for a good price," says Anginyah.

A SMVP enterprise sector facilitator, Charles Opanga says they have trained farmers on the management of ponds. Opanga says the project also offers fish farmers’ technical support by fitting drainage pipes at the ponds.