PRESENT STATUS OF SMALL SCALE FISH FARMERS IN SELECTED AREAS OF DINAJPUR DISTRICT

Abstract

For the improvement of aquaculture production, the demographic, pond condition and current aquaculture practices of selected fish farmers in Birganj upazila, Dinajpur district were studied for a period of six months effected from October 2016- March 2017. Randomly selected 67 small scale fish farmers of three villages of Moricha Union Parishad of Birganj upazila were interviewed to know the age, education, training exposure, pond area, water depth, and availability of water, species cultured, management strategies and production status by using the semi-structured questionnaire. The collected data were cheeked, edited, coded, and perform subsequent statistical analysis by using MS Excel (2007) and SPSS (Ver. 22). The study showed the age of the farmers ranged from 22 to 68 with 37% primary education and 15% illiterate. Thirty six percent fish farmers had no experience on fish farming; 24% had 1-5years; 19% had 6- 10 years; 16% had 11-15 years and 5% had more than 15 years of fish farming experience. Most of the farmers (52.24%) had pond having the size range from 5 to 10 decimal with the mean depth 4.44 ft. It was found that 79% of ponds contained water throughout the year and 21% pond had water for a period of 6 to 8 months. Diversified species was found to culture in the ponds, about 13 species were found that Indian Major Carps and Small Indigenous Species of Fish, where 63 out of 67 farmers stocked Tilapia in their ponds and followed by Rohu (44), Silver Carp (43), Common carp (41), Mola (38), Thai sarpunti and Magur (35), Shing (34), Koi (33), Bighead carp (13), Catla (12), Bata (9) and Grass Carp (6). The polyculture system consisted of 3 to 10 species. About 76% farmer used feed in culture pond and none of the farmers were found to take any measures for maintaining proper water quality. Fish farmers partially harvested their produced fish from their pond by using cast net, borsi, jhaki jal etc. The fish production in the selected area where Tilapia ranked highest with 22% produced fish and followed by Silver carp (18%), Rohu (13%), Common carp and Thai sarpunti (11%), Koi (6%), Shing (4%), Bighead carp, Magur and Mola (3%), and the least was Catla, Bata, and Grass carp (2%). About 92.5 % farmers use fish only for consumption purposes, the remaining farmers (7.5%) used for both consumption and sales. The main problems identified are lack of capital, poor technical knowledge, lack of social awareness, poaching and flooding.