Church trains Meru farmers on fish production through floating ponds program

Roy Munene(in blue) at the Methodist Church of Kenya (MCK) agriculture training center in Meru where they rare fish in floating fish ponds for commercial purpose and training of local farmers. [Photo: Peter Muthomi]

An ambitious fish rearing project is changing residents fortunes in Kaaga, Meru County. The project run by the Methodist Church of Kenya trains farmers on modern fish rearing.

The CEO of the project christened — Bio-intensive and agriculture training centre — Roy Munene explains how the programme established in 2001 works. 

“We select young farmers and train them on fish rearing, how to make floating ponds made of timbers and dam liners, plus more. Our aim is to arm locals with fishing skills. We also encourage farmers to rear cat fish as opposed to other species,” Munene says.

And they have solid reasons why they focus on cat fish as opposed to tilapia rearing.

“It is obvious that most fish farmers keep tilapia because they assume it has better prospects. But we did a study and discovered that rearing tilapia is wrought with many challenges. With tilapia, there is a lot of inbreeding, they are highly prolific so you find that one tilapia can hatch a lot of eggs and they become unmanageable. It is also hard to control feeding patterns,” Munene explains.

With cat fish, if you have 100 fingerlings, by the time they are mature, you will have 100 fish in a year, and they will have acquired good weight and size that attracts good money. One cat fish can weigh one kg within a year with proper feeding.

Munene adds that another strong point of rearing cat fish is they require a small area.

Cat fish do not require a lot of oxygen and pond water can be changed after three to four weeks.

He says they work with a network of about 4,000 farmers who have majored in catfish.

“In five years, we have constructed fish projects for hundreds of farmers and they are doing well. For training we charge Sh200 per session for each farmer, a group we charge Sh3,000. The materials are locally available apart from the dam liner which we out source. The liner goes for about Sh15,000,” says Munene.

He says the reason they urge farmers to rear using the floating fish pond is because they are easy to manage and when you want to terminate the project,  it is easy to dismantle everything.

The institution has a fish hatchery, where fingerlings are propagated before being sold to farmers.

“We have a hatchery where we do artificial propagation of cat fish since they do not do that naturally if confined in a limited space. After getting the male and a female we propagate and after 48 hours we get the fingerings which we sell to the farmers at Sh50 per piece,” Munene says.

The facility also has a machinery for processing fish feeds which they sell to farmers at Sh100 per kilo.

“To process the nutritious fish feeds, the raw materials we use are omena for protein, bran, cotton seeds and sunflower. We mix with water to have the fish pellets,” Munene points out.

The beauty of this project is that it is brilliantly sustainable— it empowers the farmers and ensures the continuity of the project.

“After one year the institution buys the fish from the farmers, and it is prepared at the hotel which is part of the larger project.

As part of the project, the farmers are also trained on rearing fish in green houses as opposed to open spaces.

“The advantages of rearing fish under greenhouses is that the temperature is favourable for breeding the fish. Fish thrive in warm weather. It is also easy to control predators,” Munene says.

They also train farmers on how to make low cost plastic tanks for water storage.

Ultimately, the aim of the project is to create a sustainable market for farmers rearing fish.

“We have created the market for the fish of our farmers. We buy a kilogram at sh300 from the farmers. In 10 years’ time, the project hopes to have impacted thousands of farmers with fish rearing skills to make the Meru County sufficiently food secure.