MORE hatcheries are needed in the country for aquaculture farming to address the inconsistent supply of post larvae to assist the farmers.
Senior research officer with the Department of Fisheries, Richard Veeran made this known to the visiting delegation from the China International Centre for Economic and Technical Exchange (CICETE) that discussed strategies for developing community projects in Fiji in the fisheries and forestry sectors.
Mr Veeran said the country needed more hatcheries, allowing more private investors to come in.
Most of the hatcheries in Fiji are State-owned and Mr Veeran said post larvae are supplied for free which includes technical assistance such as digging up of ponds.
He told the delegation that Fiji now wants to build capacity for the technician as well as our farmers with a mind-set of growing from a small scale to semi commercial and later to larger scale farming.
“We also want having our technicians to enhance their capacity to have successful breeding cycles and improving aquaculture.
“That’s what we have been doing as well as the component of feeds as most of our feeds here are expensive and the quality also is very poor,” Mr Veeran said.
He said feeds that were being produced in Fiji were basically for chicken and there was a demand for fish feed in the country.
He said farmers needed to learn how to build on local ingredients for fish feeds to be used in the aquaculture farms.
Deputy Forest conservator, Semi Draunibaka said it was a successful meeting and the focus of the delegation was mostly on community assistance where they were going to assist farmers on fish ponds to see how they could increase production in aquaculture.
