Marvelous Moyo Gwanda Correspondent
THE government has embarked on a fish farming pilot project in Matabeleland South in a development that is expected to help enhance food and nutrition in the province.

In an interview at the just ended Matabeleland Agricultural Show in Gwanda Town, Beitbridge District livestock specialist in the Ministry of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development’s Livestock Production Department (LPD), Beven Musongwe, said the government, working with development partners, was training farmers on the project in the province’s three districts: Insiza, Umzingwane and Beitbridge.

Fish ponds have been constructed in some of the districts and the ponds are expected to be stocked next month.The project is also being run in other provinces.The European Commission is funding the four-year programme which is being implemented by World Vision in collaboration with the LPD.

The programme is in its second year.“The programme is targeting farmers at irrigation schemes where World Vision has done some projects.

Most sites have completed fish ponds construction. World Vision supplied them with materials for the fish ponds construction. In these fish ponds that’s where farmers will do their fish farming,” Musongwe said.

Umzingwane and Beitbridge districts each have four sites and Insiza district has five sites for the programme.Musongwe said farmers have been trained in fish farming, aqua-culture, natural resources management, co-fisheries, nutrition diversity, processing and marketing of fish among other issues. He said World Vision would provide the fish seed, Oreochromis niloticus – a bream that would be used for the project as well as the fish feed.

The bream is said to be one of the world’s most important food fishes.

“We’re now waiting to stock the fish ponds with this bream that we will use to do fish farming. We’re expecting to do the stocking in October. This fish can be harvested after a period of about six months,” Musongwe said.

Umzingwane District livestock specialist Velile Ndlovu said the project was aimed at promoting food and nutrition in line with the country’s economic blueprint, Zim-Asset, “Fish is an important source of protein hence the project will help improve the supply of a nutritive relish in rural communities and the nation as a whole.

“We’re working on the promotion of food and nutrition in communities. The market for fish is big,” she said.

Ndlovu encouraged farmers to form cooperatives that would be registered for the success of the project.

World Vision said at least $200,000 would be channelled towards the programme in Matabeleland South and 2,772 farmers would benefit under the project.