Aller Aqua trains fish farmers on innovative marketing

Aller Aqua Nigeria Limited, an agro-allied firm has trained fish farmers on innovative marketing techniques in the catfish value-chain, in order to optimise return on investments.

At the annual Farmers Workshop, held in Abule-Egba, Lagos, Managing Director and Country Manager of the firm, Mr. Nurudeen Lasisi, said despite the position of Nigeria as the largest catfish producer, farmers are yet to be impacted, because their profit margins are being eroded by the monopoly market they sell in.

He said: “We got feedback after 2018 training and we realised that farmers needed marketing channels for proper distribution of catfish that are locally produced. Nigeria is a major producer of catfish, but farmers are not regarded as wealthy because there are fish mongers who benefit heavily from them, as farmers cannot get to consumers directly.”

National Vice President of Tilapia and Aquaculture Developers Association of Nigeria (TADAN), Tiamiyu Nurudeen, who was a facilitator during the training, said Nigeria was an open market based on the huge fish deficit of about 2.6 metric tonnes.

“We have imported fish that are cheaper than the ones produced locally because of the cost of production and with the dwindling resources of Nigerians, locally produced fish is threatened.

“So, since we want to remain in business and get as much profit as possible, we now have to do things differently. Fish farmers are not profiting from their labour, market women who are fish mongers are the ones benefiting,” he said.

He disclosed that farmers have to create their own market for their fish to remain in business, adding that they should begin to do things differently.

“We realise that it is the fish mongers that are making the profit out of the sweat of the farmers. Now the farmers need to use that same structure that the market women have used over the years to create their own market and eliminate the market mongers by putting their own structure in place to service the same market.

Other facilitators spoke on practicing fish processing as a business and sustainable dinning for catfish farming in partnership with the Development Finance Office, Central Bank of Nigeria.