Fry ate a third of his costs; raising his own, he now earns Tk 10–12 lakh a year
A Nachole, Chapainawabganj fish farmer made little profit for seven or eight years buying fry. After training he has raised his own fry from eggs for two years, and sales of surplus fry cover his costs.
This farmer from Paharpur village in Nachole upazila, Chapai Nawabganj, has been in fish farming for about a decade. At first he leased other people's ponds and farmed with fry bought from various places. According to a report in Amar Sangbad, about a third of his production cost went on buying fry; farming this way for seven or eight years, he saw little profit. His three big cost heads were pond lease, fry, and transport, feed and labour.
Two years ago, on the advice of a fisheries officer from a private organisation, he took a two-day training and also received some materials. Since then he has bought fish eggs himself and started producing fry. He brings the eggs, nurses them in a nursery pond for 10 to 15 days, moves them to a rearing pond, keeps them there for one and a half to two months, and then releases them into his own ponds or sells them as fry.
This has cut the cost of buying fry, and selling surplus fry to other farmers nearly covers his total costs. He now farms fish in five ponds on 20 bighas, earning about Tk 10 to 12 lakh a year; his two sons help regularly. According to the local fisheries officer, as fish farming by the fattening method has grown in the district, the demand for fry has also risen.
Lessons
- 1.Break costs down by line; here fry was a third of costs, and producing it in-house is what turned the profit.
- 2.Raising more fry than you need lets you sell the surplus to cover costs, if local demand for fry exists.
- 3.Nursery and rearing-pond technique is hard to learn alone; a two-day training was the turning point here.
We published this with the person's permission, without revealing who they are.
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