Catfish farming is trending in Ghana, but before you dive deep into it, how profitable is catfish farming in Ghana? What are the real-world figures? can you truly make good money in catfish farming in Ghana? These and many other important topics are considered in detail in this article.
Catfish farming is the practice of raising catfish for commercial purposes. Catfish are a type of fish that are commonly farmed in many parts of the world, including the United States, China, and Nigeria but have begun to gain popularity amongst Ghanaian fish farmers, our goal today is to determine how profitable catfish farming is in Ghana to help you make informed decisions with real-world figures.
How profitable is catfish farming in Ghana? the short answer is that Catfish farming is profitable in Ghana under the right farming methods, but not so profitable if you base your entire production on commercially available catfish feeds in Ghana.
The long answer is that there are things a farmer can do to improve the odds, but generally speaking, if you are going to rely on commercial fish feed for your production, your catfish farm could suffer catastrophic losses.
The interest in catfish farming in Ghana is often driven by unrealistic profit projections, however, these projections are often given by fingerling producers who are often enticing new farmers into buying rather expensive catfish fingerlings when compared to tilapia fingerlings, and other non-market participants who base their calculations on theory.
In the real world of catfish production, you can stock 10,000 fingerlings and end up harvesting just about 6,000 due to mortality as a result of the carnivorous nature of catfish.
Our goal here isn't to scare you at all, but rather bring to bare the existing challenges that are predominant in catfish production in Ghana, and more importantly, help you overcome any such challenges and become a profitable catfish farmer in Ghana.
Famerlio produces catfish on a large scale in Ghana, thus we have real-world experience to address these growing arguments of the profit margins of catfish production in Ghana, or better put how profitable is catfish production in Ghana.
One might argue if it is not so profitable, how then are we producing it in large quantities at famerlio? Our goal isn't to scare you, believe me, but rather to bring to bear the realities of catfish production in Ghana.
Better information would save you years of agonies, many farms are folding up, after enthusiastically pumping huge capital into commercial fish feeds, hoping to make some good profit margins in their catfish production only for that hope to be dashed.
Nothing hurts more than unrealized expectations! Believe me, we've been there, and it hurts, knowing that and associating with that pain, we are better informed.
Why do we say catfish production in Ghana is not so profitable? Here are the bare facts, and they bother on these 3 factors.
Feed weight to catfish body weight conversion ratios
Price of feed
The wholesale price of catfish in Ghana
How Profitable is Catfish Farming in Ghana - Discussion from the Fish Feed Quality Perspective
Like every business, profit is key to survival, yet hardly discussed, we believe that how the question, Is Catfish farming in Ghana profitable? is one of the first few questions anyone interested in catfish farming should ask before embarking on catfish production.
Without real-world experience though, most of the answers you get might not be true, this is why this article on how profitable is Catfish farming in Ghana is crucial to most new farmers or any farmer who hopes to make good profits producing catfish in Ghana. Let's dive in!
Feed weight to fish body weight conversion ratio plays a critical role in how much profit you can make as a farmer. In simple terms, it is what weight of feed your fish consumes to gain 1 kg body weight.
For some commercial catfish feed products in Ghana, that ratio can be as high as 1.5kg of feed to 1kg of weight.
This conversion ratio is often disputed but in our real-world use case, we have truly experienced these ratios, even the best fish feed in the market today, has provided us with 1.2kg to 1 kg live body weight.
Using even the best ratios means that for every 1kg of live catfish, you produce in Ghana, you require at least 1.2kg of feed, keep this in mind as we proceed.
As with every business that has to do with production, the cost of production is crucial to your profit margins. You need to know how much you are spending on each item, in order to properly determine the profit margins.
