Getting The Fishes To The Market

Last week, in the article which I titled: Help, My Fishes Are Mature But,…, I narrated the on going experiences of two fish farmers who like many Nigerians heeded the call of the government to join the agriculture food chain.

While the experiences of both fish farmers are slightly different, they both are confronted with a common evil. Their catfishes are ready for the market but, they find out that they are at the mercy of the very shrewd fresh fish sellers that dot the markets in Lagos. These market women are under-pricing the fishes and the implications of this is obvious. A potential threat stares these very young business men and women in the face.

In this article, I shall attempt a suggestion of the opportunities available to young fish farmers when it comes to marketing their products, especially in the very large Lagos market.

Let me quickly point out that the second fish farmer in that first article has begun to implement one of the methods we shall discuss here. When he became overwhelmed by the increasing financial involvement in trying to feed the fully grown fishes; he went to some big restaurant operators around his locality and invited them over to his farm.

To his surprise, these operators were able to buy an average of 100 fishes each week during the yuletide season. He confessed that although this did not represent his expectation but, it was able to reduce the burden of feeding a few thousands of fully grown fishes when he ought to be stocking a new batch.

This is his confession, “Though I couldn’t sell all at once but, that was quite encouraging. Today, I still have a few hundreds left and the market has slowed down, but I am confident that soon, I will be free from feeding these big ones and face the new ones I am planning to bring in.”

The above method is one of the numerous ways a young fish farmer can go about selling off his/her fishes when they are ready for the market.

Another way is to approach some of the many shopping malls springing up in the city of Lagos and its environs. A visit to them will show that they already have on their stable packaged and frozen catfish. Among other types. While they are not likely to pay you immediately, however you can be sure that they will pay on return. That is they would pay as customers buy the stock. This may take two weeks or at most a month, but with the reputable ones, you are guaranteed payment.

However, in dealing with malls, the farmer is advised to ensure a good standard in packaging and preservation so that a customer does not return with a bad comment concerning your product. The reason is simple. When you launch out to malls, you are going to rely more on repeat patronage to keep supplying them.

Another ready means is to enter a partnership arrangement with some big time events planners. Given the growing size of the social life in Lagos and surrounding cities, virtually no week gets by without some wedding event, installations, traditional wedding, inductions, birthday parties, house warming, burial, etc. Notable event planners take the burden off the neck of the celebrants and handle things like venue, feeding, gifts, printings, and branding for the celebrants.

Finding and partnering with such events planners could guarantee regular market for your fishes.

Perhaps the one solution that is almost cork sure to give you rest of mind is controlling your market to a large extent when you own your own oven (kiln for roasting), package the roasted fishes, possibly brand it and send them to the market through existing network of distributors.

This provides perhaps the greatest advantage since some value has been added to the fish and therefore you are in a better position to bargain and get more for your effort.

The question that will agitate most fish farmers especially new entrants is that of the capital requirement to get a kiln or oven large enough to roast say 500 to 1,000 fishes at a time? There are local fabricators that are already making ovens and they are ever willing to design one to meet your specification and at reasonable cost. This cost is absorbed as part of your capital outlay and in no time, this would be defrayed as sales increases.

You must however know that different locations in the country may require a different marketing mix to make the best of a situation. I am aware of persons who have given up on the fish farming business as a result of poor pricing.

In fact, those who have left because of this poor pricing by the merchant fish sellers are more than those who abandoned the business due to other reasons like theft, high cost of feeding, high cost of power generation, etc.

I have gone to this length to show that with just a little determination and perseverance, the sky is the starting point for any fish farmer in the country. After all, there are well over 180 million mouths to feed in Nigeria including neighbours countries in West Africa which are waiting on the side, to pick up the excess production.

So, my encouragement today is, don’t give up, there is a way out of that debacle in selling your mature fishes.