ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF SMALL SCALE FISH ENTERPRISE

ABSTRACT

Small scale fish farmers are the major stakeholder in the cultured fish industry and this study was to carryout to investigate the economic analysis of small scale fish farming enterprise in Uteh and Temboga fish farm cluster in Benin city, Edo state. The specific objectives are to evaluate the socio – economic characteristics of the fish farmers in the study area; nature of fish farm production, estimate the costs and returns of small scale fish production enterprises; and its highlight the constraint faced by fish farmer in the study area which were elicited with a well-structured questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive analysis such as frequency and percentage which were presented in tables, charts etc. from the study result shows that majority of  the respondents were male (60%) and single (40%), the result also showed that majority of respondents are involved in semi-intensive fish farming and 80% of the fish farmers in the study area culture mainly Clarias spp. From the result of the study, it can be concluded that small scale farming is highly practiced in the study area. It was shown that although catfish farming is highly profitable, it requires a lot of financial power to start as majority of the cost of production goes into feeding.  Its therefore recommend that financial institutions should be more pro-active in granting loans to fish farmers and would be investor especially feed producers at a reduced interest rate but with proper monitoring. Access to loan will help farmers to practice modern culture system such as re-circulatory aquaculture system which requires huge capital investment and the yield is also very high.