AQUACULTURE WITHOUT FRONTIERS

PROJECT PROFORMA

Funding request (totals for each year)

Funding support from contributing agencies/individuals (totals for each year)

Key Contacts:

In Tripura fish is an integral part of the food of people: those who can't afford to purchase fresh fish frequently, at least buy dry fish and /or fermented fish to have fish flavour in their meal. In addition, changing demography of the state with 70% of the population now comprising Bengali people, the demand for fish is on the increase.  As a result, fish of any size can be sold at any time and progressive farmers with experience in fish culture view fish not only as food, but fish pond as an “ATM”. Even with such good demand, productivity of fish ponds is poor, particularly with Tribal people who do not yet view fish culture as a potential economic activity.

In the past two years, efforts were made to introduce fish culture and increase fish production from the existing ponds. This effort in the first year contributed thirty farmers, majority of them belonging to tribal communities derive support to improve fish production. In the second year, the number was increased to fifty farmers, with most of them again coming from the tribal areas. In the ongoing culture trials, the project activities has been expanded to cover Bengali community and at present altogether 75 farmers derive direct benefit from the project activities. Besides the social issues that are confronted in effective project implementation, among the technical issues, availability of quality seed of desired species is recognized as one of the important issues that are contributing to lower productivity. Hence, through this project, it is aimed to establish a community hatchery complex and provide quality seed to entrepreneurial farmers to nurse the seed to appropriate size and sell to other farmers /traders in their area. The hatchery would be managed with the participation of the community with the Vocational Training Centre playing the main role. In addition, the facilities built will be mainly used to train youth who are brought to the St. Xavier’s Vocational training centre to provide training on integrated farming activities including aquaculture. Annually the centre trains about 50 boys and 50 girls, comprising largely school dropouts brought from the areas that have poor access to facilities and livelihood options. It is anticipated that the facilities built will have long term multifarious benefits to stimulate good aquaculture practices in the State with the graduated trainees initiating activities in their places, spread throughout the state and that too in difficult areas. Following major outputs are anticipated from the project : potential youth are trained in fish seed production and nursing besides fish farming ; sustained availability of quality seed of the desired species to the community ; spread of good seed production practices to different parts of Tripura through the youth trained annually ; creating seed nursing as an economic activity at village level ; enhancing fish productivity of the farmers through the use of quality seed available in their own vicinity.   

 The project operated by the St. Xavier's Vocational training centre will obtain the technical support to implement the activity from the College of Fisheries under the Central Agricultural University as well as the Regional Research Station of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research located within Tripura State. In addition, the expertise of the Don Bosco in community mobilization and integrated farming will help in having good impact of the project activities. It is anticipated that during this period of two years, the activities will get integrated to the Vocational Training Centre programs and thereby the activities will be carried out after completion of the project.

3.1       Background and Justification

Tripura has more than 60% of the area under forest and is known for its rich biodiversity. Rice is the major crop grown and it is the staple food with fish for large section of the population, particularly the Bengali community, which constitutes nearly 70% of the total population. The average land holding of people is small with majority having less than one ha. The rain fall is high in the area with an annual rainfall of @2000 mm. and the land topography is such that nearly 60-70% of the area is under hills, called as “tilla” land with rest being low lying area called as “lunga” land. Ponds are built in various localities mainly as water harvesting devises for use in the dry season. The ponds available with farmers are usually of small size with an average area of 900m². Fish is a highly valued commodity in the area and the price of fish is higher as compared to several other parts of the country and hence large quantity of fish is imported from outside the state and sold. Fish ponds are yet not effectively utilized for aquaculture due to various reasons. Availability quality seed of the desired species and at the right time is recognized as one the technical constraints hampering aquaculture development in the State in areas that reasonably good access to resources. In other areas suffering from insurgency coupled with poor communication facilities, people suffer from even getting poor availability of inputs, irrespective of the quality.

Through the AwF support, in the first year, effort was made to bring awareness among people about fish culture and encouraged them to initiate fish culture. Based on the results observed with thirty families in the first season, the number was increased to fifty families in the following season. These farmers were given training and follow up support along with some essential inputs like lime, fish seed and some chemical fertilizers. It was possible to increase fish production from a low of 750 kg/ka to more than 1300 kg/ha. Besides fish culture , through an integrated approach , with the support of ICAR centre , farmers were also assisted to improve other farming activities , particularly in the area of tuber crops , supply of good breeds of poultry , pigs and mangos. Large majority of these farmers belonged to tribal communities and the experience of these farmers in carrying out the fish culture with the resources available indicate the opportunities available to improve fish availability as well as income of these poor farmers. The situation in Bengali dominated area where the work has been initiated during this year is similar in terms of quality seed availability , but in terms of their involvement in the activity is much higher as compared to tribal farmers. There is a large variation in response to the interventions between the two communities that are influenced by cultural, social and political situations.  

Few of the seed producers engaged in the activity aim at just producing the seed without any respect for the quality and farmers have no easy way to differentiate the quality. In addition, desired types of fish seed are not available at the right time and farmers tend to stock whatever is available. Poor communication facilities and insurgency further hinder the seed availability in different parts of the state. Hence, this project has been designed based on the suggestions made by farmers to help them with quality seed by establishing a hatchery that will be managed with the active participation of community. The hatchery will also focus on species that are in need of farmers like minor carps and gradually aim to introduce easy to culture species like tilapia.   

Most importantly, the proposed facilities will serve as a training resource for the rural youth in the ongoing one year training program. St. Xavier’s Vocational training centre provides one year course to rural youth on integrated agricultural activities, generally comprising of 50 boys and 50 girls. These youth are drawn from the rural areas and they are generally school dropouts looking for some skills to earn their livelihood. The training centre has good integrated farming facility with nearly two hectares of water area at present. In this centre, it is proposed to establish the hatchery facility. The existing pond facility will serve as brood stock maintenance ponds and new structures created will serve as central spawn production facility. The seed produced will be supplied to identified entrepreneurial farmers in the project operational villages and encourage them to engage in seed nursing and selling business.  Hence, through this training of youth, greater objective of spreading the good practices to various parts of Tripura will be achieved.

Aim of the project:

To improve the quality seed availability to fish farmers in Tripura

The objectives of the proposed project are

-          establish a central hatchery facility to produce quality fish seed   

-          Train rural youth attending the course on agriculture with St. Xavier’s Vocational training centre on seed production and nursing besides aquaculture

-          promote decentralized seed nursing and distribution of the nursed seed at the village level employing family approach  

-          Provide support to fish farmers to improve their fish productivity 

-          Support decentralized quality seed production and nursing by the trained youth and farmers in different parts of Tripura

3.2              Project Context (relationship to other activities)

This is a follow up project developed based on the felt need of the community as well as the St. Xavier’s Vocational training center’s opportunity to train youth on seed production and nursing besides fish farming.  Through two years of work on fish culture with the community, the centre has been able to establish good relationship with the community and initiate their community development activities through agriculture. The community is beginning to feel and appreciate the approach of the project with emphasis on knowledge and focus on women. The project encouraged farmers to use the on-farm resources or use the resources available with them to buy the pond inputs. Though the production levels obtained by farmers is still low (@1300 kg/ha), the increase in productivity from an earlier level of @ 750 kg/ha has brought happiness to farmers. In addition, by adopting farming systems approach, farmers have been assisted in various ways to improve the productivity of other agricultural crops as well animal husbandry practices, though focus continues on fish. 

The project has actively collaborated with the College of Fisheries and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research Centre established to address the issues of hilly region in Tripura. This partnership has enabled the project to derive the benefits of the scientific outputs not only in the field of aquaculture, but also in the other areas of agriculture, particularly through the ICAR centre.  Integration has been the main focus and the project has introduced improved tuber crops that are popular with tribal farmers, vegetable cultivation, piggery which is again very popular with tribal farmers.

The St. Xavier’s vocational training centre has established good working relationship with various Government agencies. The successful integrated activities carried out by the centre have become the model activities for the State. The practical approach taken up by the centre in providing vocational skills has made highly positive impact. Further, because of the insurgency prevailing in some pockets of the State, the activities of the centre have become all the more important as they are capable of going in to areas that risk prone and work for the benefit of the community.  

The College of Fisheries with eight different Departments offers a four year undergraduate program for the students mainly drawn from the Northeast region. The region has witnessed the fast growth of aquaculture sector and at present the regions contribution is estimated to be about 50%. With the declining capture fisheries resources, aquaculture is expected to make the increased contribution to meet the demand. Accordingly the students are given orientation with focus on aquaculture. The project in the past has given an opportunity for the students to derive the benefits of the field experience of AwF projects. It is expected that in future too, students will immensely benefit from the project.

The Indian Council of Agricultural Centre has been established for the Northeastern region hilly region with a specific mandate of developing farming system technologies to benefit people. Farming systems mode of research is the main focus and the centre has developed already four different farming systems models that can fit in to different regions of the state. The centre has the scientific staff who deal with varied crops grown on the farm and this multidisciplinary expertise available on the station has been a great advantage to the AwF project. In the past, AwF farmers have derived larger benefits from the farming system approach.

In addition to the above two scientific institution , the project will also derive the expertise and support of the State Council for Science and Technology , Tripura University , Bamboo mission , rubber board etc to help the farmers to address varieties problems encountered in their farm and improve the farm productivity.       

3.3              Detailed Methods/Strategy:

The project will organize consultation involving all the stakeholders to develop a strategy that will help in accomplishing the set objectives in the given time frame. St. Xavier’s Vocational training centre with a basic objective of building the capacity of people, particularly the poor, has a good net work to select people from the most disadvantaged areas and bring them to the vocational training centre to give them necessary knowledge skills on an annual basis. The technical help for the project operation will be sought from the College of Fisheries as well as ICAR. Since Dr. M.C.Nandeesha and Dr. B. Santhosh have been actively supporting the project we do not see any difficulty to get the continued support.

The project will focus on Indian major carp seed, namely catla ( Catla catla) and rohu ( Labeo rohita), common carp ( Cyprinus carpio). Improved variety of common carp, named as Amur carp (Cyprinus carpio) has already been procured and built as a stock in the St. Xavier’s centre and breeding will be undertaken. The Centre also has built the good brood stock of rohu  and Chinese carps , namely grass carp and silver carp .

There is growing interest and demand of farmers for the three other carps that are more suitable for culture in small ponds , namely  silver barb ( Barbodes gonionotus)  , bata ( Labeo bata) ,  gonius ( Labeo gonius) . The centre will aim to build the brood stock in adequate numbers.  

Tilapia is yet not officially introduced for culture in the state, though Nile tilapia is available from the stock brought from Bangladesh. It is learnt that Government has provided permission for the two major companies to start the tilapia culture under bio-secure environment. The centre  would explore the possibility to establish link and initiate tilapia culture on the training centre to build capacity of youth on this potential species.