White elephant: Sh61 million Nyeri fish farm that has no fish

Wamagana Fish Factory in Nyeri that has been non-operational since it was officially opened on October 4,2017.  Photo:Kibata Kihu/Standard

The Government sunk injected millions of shillings in an ambitious project to get the residents of Central Kenya to eat fish.

At the centre of the project is a Sh61 million fish processing factory that is now lying idle because there is little to process.

Completed in 2015, Wamagana Mini Fish Processing Plant was part of a plan to promote fish farming in Nyeri County, which included setting up ponds and encouraging residents to adopt a fish diet.

Construction of the processing plant was prompted by the need to address an expected increase in fish harvests from the increased number of operational ponds.

The facility was touted to serve as the fish bulking and sale outlet for day-to-day fish sales. It was also expected to shield farmers from exploitation by middlemen, ensure the prices remained stable from the expected glut in the fish market and reduce post-harvest losses.

Pipe dream

Most importantly, value addition meant the farmers would earn better for every kilo of fish sold in the more established markets.

All that seems to be a pipe dream a few years down the line. There is not enough fish in the ponds to keep the factory afloat. A number of them have since turned into muddy patches.

This despite reports from the county government estimating that Nyeri has about 1.4 million hectares of potential fish farming land and access to diverse fresh and marine water resources.

In 2015, ponds accounted for about 12 tonnes of fish monthly, but those days are gone, and farmers who expected them to be wet gold mines are a disappointed lot.

“For some time I had decided that fish farming for me was a labour of love. I have eaten enough fish but I do not think I have earned enough,” says Humphrey Ngatia.

From the edge of his fish pond set beside a small tributary on Ragati River, he declares that in four months, he would be lucky to harvest 700 fish.

“We were told these ones would be bigger and would fetch more in the market,” he says, referring to the mono-sex tilapia that were provided by the county government in May this year.

He was part of a select group of farmers that delved into fish farming after the Government convinced them it was a better investment than the region's other main economic activities - tea, coffee and dairy farming.

For every kilo of fish, the farmers were promised at least Sh500.

However, Ngatia and hundreds of farmers across the county would soon realise that fish farming was no walk in the park. Many abandoned their ponds as a result.

In Mathira, there were about 250 ponds when the project began; now there are less than 100.

Most of the farmers and ponds were engaged between 2009 and 2013, under the Fish Farming Enterprise Productivity Programme (FFEPP), a part of the Economic Stimulus Programme

Under the programme, interested farmers were required to present their proposals to the Fisheries Department for evaluation.

After establishing that the land was suitable for fish farming, the department would dig a pond and stock it with 1,000 fingerlings.

To keep the project going, each farmer was provided with enough feed to last until the maturity of the fish - six months.

Harvests fell

However, questions on the viability of the project started arising after the harvests fell significantly below expectation.

Then the fish farmers began to realise that keeping fish was not as easy as they had imagined, especially in a region not used to a fish diet.

“The fish reproduced fast and over-populated the ponds, which caused stunted growth. The biggest I harvested was about 200 grams and I struggled to sell each at Sh100,” says Ngatia.

Eventually, what was supposed to convince farmers to take up fish farming ended up being a deterrent.

To respond to the challenges, the county government argued that the low fish production was especially evident where tilapia species were stocked.

“The resultant stunted growth is due to low stocking densities in the fish ponds and inbreeding,” a report presented before the county executive committee explained.

To counter the challenges, the executive adopted the recommendation of issuing some 134 famers with mono-sex tilapia.

“We expect that the mono-sex fingerlings will attain the required market size faster if properly fed,” said Agriculture Executive Robert Thuo at the time.

Ngatia and his neighbour, Njoki Gacuguma, were part of the select group of farmers who, in June this year, benefited from 134,000 fingerlings.

Four months down the line, while Ngatia is optimistic about his harvest, his neighbour Njoki is left with an empty pond after it emptied into a nearby stream, along with all her fish.

Arrow roots

A number of farmers have now converted their fish ponds into small arrow root gardens.

These cases embody the successes and failures of fish farming in the county. Many farmers admit that the biggest challenge comes from the high cost of fish feed and the non-existent extension services.

In terms of costs, the farmers may have reasoned that fish eat less than dairy cattle and require even less to take care of.

They were wrong.

For instance, to prevent her pond from draining into a nearby stream, Njoki needed to buy a sheet of polythene to seal any leaks. This would have cost her Sh120,000.

When fully operational, the Wamagana processing factory was supposed to handle eight tonnes of fish per day and produce fish feed.

But that figure has turned out to be unsustainable.

Still, the county went on to sink more money into the project.

In 2016, the county stepped up its interventions, including stocking fish ponds with high-yield mono-sex tilapia that cost Sh2 million and procuring a refrigerated truck and deep freezers to help farmer keep the highly delicate catch longer.

However, the interventions have not succeeded in re-energising the sector. There are still considerable difficulties in offloading raw fish into the market.

Desperate fish farmers have been making efforts to increase consumption by taking loans to buy a mincer, hoping to lure more clients with fish sausages.

This too has faced challenges.

Mincing machine

According to Nyeri County Fish Farming Co-operative Chairman Charles Mbaoni, despite having bought the mincing machine, they have been unable to make it work fully due to an unstable power supply.

“We have been having power issues at the factory for a while now and until the problem is sorted out, we are unable to sausage the fish,” said Mr Mbaoni.

He said the farmers were struggling with acquire fingerlings and fish feed, and a shortage of extension services.

Meanwhile, the Government is pushing on with its campaign to convince Central Kenya residents to embrace fish at their dinner tables.

In Nyeri for the agricultural show last month, President Uhuru Kenyatta promised to boost fish farming and consumption.