A study of fish farmers in North-Western Province, Zambia, June 1989
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In June 1989, ALCOM carried out a socio-economic study of the relationship between small-scale rural aquaculture and farming systems in Mwinilunga District, North-Western Province, Zambia. Informal interviews were held with 23 randomly selected fish farmer households. ALCOM's 1988 fish farmer survey in the province served as the background for a deeper study of production achievements, management practices, labour and resource allocations, harvesting strategies and disposal of harvested fish. The Farming Systems classifications defined by the Adaptive Research Planning Team (ARPT), the Zambian research body on farming systems, constituted the reference against which fish farming activities were investigated. There are two major farming systems in Mwinilunga District: “the traditional cassava-based subsistence shifting cultivation system”, encompassing the majority of households; and the “small-scale semi-commercial farming system”, practised by about 10% of the households. Of the i nterviewed households, 13 belonged to the “semi-commercial” group and 10 to the “subsistence” group. Production from fish ponds is low, in most cases within the range of 3–6 kg/are annually. Semi-commercial farmers produce more fish than subsistence farmers; motivated by their higher returns, they expand farms more often, using their own means. New ponds, however, are smaller and have a shorter life-span than the ponds built by subsidies provided by externally funded projects in the 1980s. P onds are inadequately fertilized. The main reason is scarcity of manure. The available manure is applied mainly during the cold dry season, both to fish ponds and vegetable gardens, not during the warm rainy season when the fish grows. Seasonal shortage of labour to collect and apply manure is one reason. Semi-commercial farmers have better manured ponds than subsistence farmers, the most apparent reason being their more numerous farm animals (cattle, goats and chickens).