Farmers Of Catfish Complain About Poor Sales.
Due to the country-wide cash shortage brought on by the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) cashless policy and currency redesign, catfish producers have bemoaned poor patronage.
In separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Lagos, the farmers made these claims.
Notwithstanding the approval of the cashless policy, Mr. Anthony Hammed, the Chief Executive Officer of Simple Aquaculture and Standard Resource Farms, bemoaned the poor demand for catfish.
“A big worry for us right now is the recent decline in the market for catfish.
“The people are no longer buying catfish, fishes are just in the water consuming feeds and increasing our cost of operation.
“Even though we allow mobile transfers, we saw that sales suddenly decreased as a result of the Naira shortage.
Even now, despite the fact that the price of ingredients and fish feed is rising daily, we are slashing our prices in order to sell our produce, Hammed told NAN.
He pointed out that they had to lower prices in order to stay in business despite the high cost of feed materials.
Fish meal, soy, and groundnut paste (GNC) are now very expensive, and people aren’t really buying them.
“We have to lower the price just to sell; we do not break even, but there is still a small margin of profit with which we keep body and soul together and to be in business,” he said.
Another farmer, Mrs. Kemi Egbucha, stated that many farmers had closed their operations due to low customer demand.
“In fish farming presently, a lot of farmers are opting out of the trade due to increment in fish feed.
The majority of the time, when fish farmers order feed from businesses, their supplies are delayed by up to a month, which causes them to incur losses.
“Many obstacles prevent local fish farmers from working in the industry. Farm mortality rises as a result of inadequate feed supply.
“It is definitely causing the fish growers to become fed up with the company right now.
“We used to purchase a bag of fish feed for N11,000 previously but today it goes for as high as N20,600 each bag.
“Even at that we still have minimal demand,” Egbucha remarked.
