Ponds spark pupils’ interest in agriculture

Agriculture students from Ingotse Secondary School at their fish pond project in Kakamega. [PHOTOS: CHRISPEN SECHERE]

A pond project at a public school in Kakamega County is working wonders. Thanks to five fish ponds at Ingotse Secondary School, agriculture is now seen as the in thing.

“Since the project started in 2011, the number of students taking agriculture as a subject has gone up. We are seeing a radical shift in subject selection because of these ponds. It is like all students want to take up agriculture as their choice subject. The ponds make agriculture fun,” Bramuel Wasike, an agriculture teacher at the school, says.

The teacher says this year, the school has 90 candidates taking agriculture up from last year’s 60.

The ponds, which were initiated by the County government, have separate functions.

One of the ponds is for breeding fingerlings, two are used for storage and the remaining two for stocking fingerlings.

The project which sits on a half an acre farm, is managed by one farm hand and the agriculture students.

Teacher Wasike says the project is an important asset to the school for many reasons.

“First, they are a learning resource. Form One and Two students come here for practical lessons. For instance, when they are learning about classification of animals, they come here for first hand experience. Some Biology classes are also done at the ponds,” says Wasike, the project coordinator.

He explains further: “For our agriculture students, we use the ponds for topics like fish farming and farm structures. During the lessons by the pondside, we explain to them how they can set up various kinds of fish ponds at home. We have seen many pupils have gone ahead and started their fish ponds from the lessons they picked from here.”

This is how the project works:

The school obtains fingerlings locally and occasionally, the students breed their own fingerlings.

“To get good quality fish breeds, we try our best to get superior fingerlings. It is a delicate and involving process, but we are perfecting our art,” the teacher says.

The school harvests close to 2,000 mature tilapia every six months during a good season and on bad days they harvest 1,200.

The school sells the fish to individual buyers who visit the school and they take some to Lutonyi Fish Plant where wholesale traders frequent. The plant also comes in handy for storage purposes because it has large cooling plants.

“A client may make an order for fish from the pond but fail to come for it. We get many of such cases. So to avoid the fish going bad yet it has already been paid for, we store it at the plant till the client comes for it,” he says.

Proceeds from the fish project are ploughed back into the project by buying more fingerlings.

The project also helps to enrich the schools diet.

“Once in a while, especially when we have a bumper harvest, students sample fish from the project. We mostly do this when we have a public holiday,” says Wasike.

One of the biggest challenges students face is getting quality feed and at a fair price, to sustain the project.

To get around this, they have had to devise creative survival measures.

“We have come up with a way to improvise our own healthy fish feed. To make the fish feed, we use arrow roots and banana leaves then mix it with specific weeds. We then cook the mixture in water for some minutes then dry it. We then mix this dry matter with maize flour and dried leaves resulting into a course substance which we feed to our fish,” he says as he points out how the pond is surrounded with arrowroot plants.

Another big hurdle they face is the fish predators with culprit number one being the kingfisher.

“This area has so many king fisher birds which are notorious for stealing our fish. To deal with that problem, we have a guard who watches over the ponds. He also ensures naughty locals do not steal the fish,” he says.

Students who take agriculture have glowing tributes for the fish project.

“Thanks to the lessons I have learnt from this project, now I can comfortably start and run a fish project and harvest fish. I also know a lot about searching for a solid market,” says David Masheti one of the Agriculture students.

Kakamega Fisheries Department officer Jonathan Masaba says the county has initiated several of such projects in learning institutions to initiate young people into fish farming.

“Our goal is to equip young people with vital farming skills that will come in handy once they complete their studies. We want as many young people as possible to embrace aquaculture as a way of life,” he says.