Ghanaian
and other researchers in West Africa would have to focus their attention on
developing local feeds to reduce dependence on imported feeds to meet demands in
animal production.
That’s
a call by Professor Oyedapo Fagbenro of the Department of Fisheries and
Aquaculture Technology at the Federal university of Technology, Akure, Nigeria.
According
to him, increasing the production and availability of cultivated food fish
species in West Africa is of significant importance if the human populations
are to be adequately fed.
He
spoke on the need to reduce, recycle and reuse agro by-products for sustainable
animal feed production in West Africa.
“Do
we need to import food for humans and then for animals when there are variety
of feed materials that are wasted and underutilized?… we have political
independence, we should also have nutritional or animal feed industry
independence,” he noted.
Prof.
Fagbenro was addressing a two-day International Conference on Animal Nutrition in
Kumasi, hosted by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology
(KNUST).
The
conference, on the theme “Agro by-products in Animal Feed Production in West
Africa”, has the objective of collating a holistic approach to identifying
options for optimizing animal protein production.
It
attracted scientists, manufacturers and traders in the animal feed industry to
share experience on the animal feed value chain to enhance food security and sustainability
in animal production.
Vice-Chancellor
of the KNUST, Professor Kwasi Obiri-Danso, emphasized the need for scientists,
feed manufacturers, processors and practitioners to work together to improve
the feed value chain.
He
said such move will ensure that “we will all be contributing actively to NEPAD’s
call on food and nutrition and Goal 2 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals which
is to: end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote
sustainable agriculture”.
Africa’s
aquaculture output to the global production remains very low, although there
has been remarkable increase globally in the last half century.
Most
of the production is attributed to small-scale, semi-intensive farming of
tilapia, with few large-scale commercial ventures able to demonstrate long-term
economic viability.
In
Ghana, aquaculture is a priority to the country’s economic development agenda since
it is a major source of protein.
A
national policy on aquaculture was adopted in 2013 with the objective of
increasing aquaculture production from the current 40,000tons to 130,000tons by
2018.
Experts
say meeting the target requires the development of suitable supplementary diets
using locally-available plant by-products for most of the fish farmers.
Prof.
Steve Amisah of the KNUST says the dwindling population of fish in the wild
requires that Ghana would have to focus on fish pond or cage production.
“If
you put animals in captivity, then you need to feed them…but we should also
make sure that the feed we are giving them is enough to balance all their nutrient
requirements, that is why we’re talking about nutrition,” he said.
Prof.
Amisah says such feed should enhance the growth of the fish without
compromising the economic benefit of the farmer and without polluting the
environment.
With
funding from the Danish development agency, DANIDA, the Sustainable Fish Feed
Project has the aim to improve aquaculture in Ghana by producing cost effective
and environmentally friendly fish feed using agro by-products.
This
is to help tackle the bottlenecks of high cost of feeds and the environmental
impact of high protein feeds.
Prof.
Peter Stov from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) says the scientific
activities in developing animal feed must be seen to benefit the society and
not just academia.
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