Kakamega residents have been urged to take up fish farming in a move aimed at improving food and nutrition security.
Locals are being encouraged to set up private fish ponds on their farms even as the county governments come to support the venture through the issuance of free fingerlings.
Earlier this week, fish farmers in the region began receiving mono-sex Tilapia fingerlings from the county government under an initiative by the Aquaculture Business Development Programme-ABDP.
The ABDP is a programme jointly funded by the Government of Kenya and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) meant to increase smallholder aquaculture development in 15 counties, Kakamega being one of them.
A total of 581 fish farmers have been handpicked through the program and are set to benefit from 581,000 fingerlings.
Each farmer gets 1000 fingerlings which they are expected to rare to maturity on their farms and harvest for sale and subsistence use.
Fish farmer and owner of the largest fish farm in Kakamega county Laban Mwanzo’s farm Labed Cash Marine Enterprise Fish farm located in Malava has been handpicked to supply the fingerlings to the farmers through the support of the county government.
The farm produces over 2 million fingerlings each month with each going for Sh.2.50.
So far, the farm has supplied a total of 95,000 fingerlings to fish farmers in Lurambi and Navakholo with the exercise expected to continue across all the 12 sub-counties targeting the 581 farmers.
Other counties that have benefited from the initiative by the International Fund for Agricultural Development-IFAD include Kisii, Siaya, Busia and Kisumu counties which have received less than 300,000 fingerlings.
Under the program, farmers will also be supplied with fish feeds to enable them to cut the cost of feeding the fingerlings to maturity.
“I am still the one supplying fingerlings to these other counties and am glad Kakamega received the most fingerlings which means more farmers get to benefit and improve their livelihoods," said Mwanzo.
