Investigation of the Personal, Social and Economic Factors Influencing Catfish Farmers Utility in Choosing Pond Types: Implications for Profitability

Özet

The use of wrong pond types in fish farms has affected profit and thiskind of widespread impression could make people quit fish farming ifit is not addressed. In this study, investigation of the contributingfactors of farmers choice of pond types and profitability in Delta StateNigeria were examined. A multi-stage sampling method was used tocarefully choose 180 fish farmers. Data were collected from June toJuly 2019 using structured questionnaire. The collected data wereanalyzed by using descriptive statistics, multinomial logit model,regression model and one way Anova. The findings showed thatmajority of respondents were males and were married. The mean agewas 44years with household of 5 people. High proportion of therespondents had secondary education with 9 years’ experience in fishfarming. The mean pond size was 148.44m2. Majority of thememployed earthen ponds in their fishing business. The major reasonsfor pond type selection were land availability and scale of production.The result further shows that farmers choice of pond types wasinfluenced by cost of feed, labor cost, pond size, output, stockingdensity and cost of pond construction. The profit of catfish operatorshas been positively influenced by education of the respondent,experience of the respondent, stocking capacity, pond size and pondtypes of the respondent. The average profit realized from earthen pondwas N61092.55 while average profit of concrete pond and tarpaulinpond operators are N38394.68 and N29753.19 respectively showingthat earthen ponds are more profitable than concrete and tarpaulinponds. Further results of Anova revealed that at 5% level ofprobability, there was statistically significant profit differencebetween the different pond types as a whole. There is need to enhancecredit accessibility and to subsidize improved production inputs foreffective utilization of pond types.