Challenges in the Era of Globalization - iaabd

Challenges in the Era of Globalization
Edited by Emmanuel Obuah
(FAO 1996). Since the inputs used are virtually the same as in their farming activities, small-scale fish
farming is properly seen in the context of agricultural production (Gabriel et al., 2007). Over the last five
years however, fish farming has received increased attention following reports of dwindling fish stock in
Lake Victoria, Uganda’s main source of capture fisheries 3 , due to the use of illegal and harmful fishing
methods and soaring demand Ogutu–Ohwayo et al., 1990; Bahiigwa, Mugambe and Blackie, 2003).
Already, half of the native fish from Lake Victoria are extinct, and the traditional lifestyles of lake-shore
communities that make a living from its troubled waters have been disrupted and are crumbling (Ogutu–
Ohwayo, 2000). In an effort to manage this renewable but exhaustible fishery resource, international
development agencies such as Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United States Agency for
International Development (USAID), United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)]
and advanced research institutes (such as Auburn University, Alabama, Makerere University) are
promoting aquaculture within the context of integrated agriculture and have begun addressing sociocultural
and economic factors that have been impeding aquaculture development in Uganda. This
complimentary study investigated the profitability and socioeconomics of aquaculture in central Uganda.
The rest of the paper is organized into six additional sections. The next Section presents the materials and
method followed by the profitability analysis in Section three, Section four examines the factors that
influence aquaculture profitability while the factors that hinder aquaculture development are presented in
Section five. The last section presents the study conclusions and recommendations.
Theoretical Framework
Following Sadoulet and De Janvry, (1995), a farmer is assumed to choose a combination of variable
inputs and outputs that maximize profit subject to the existing technology constraint. Given the
underlying production function and assuming the technology to be homogeneous across the farms, the
profit function is
………………………………………………………………… (1)
where p is a vector of prices of output q is quantity produced and w is a vector of variable inputs.
……………………………………………………………………… (2)
Where is profit and other variables remain as defined before. According to Sadoulet and De Janvry,
(1995), the function can be normalized and used to estimate a single commodity such as fish. The
normalized function is
Materials and Methods
…………………………………………………………………………………… (3)
The data for this study are drawn from a field survey conducted in June-July 2010 on 2000 fish farms in
the three major fish farming districts in central Uganda: Mukono, Mpigi and Wakiso districts. The
investigated region is also the target area of an aquaculture development program, USAID-AquaFish
Outreach Project, which started in 2009 as a follow-up on a previous project (FISH project) in
3 Though Uganda is rich in aquatic resources, with 18% of its 241,038 sq km total area covered by lakes, rivers and
swamps, this potential has been eroded due to over fishing (Jagger and Pender, 2001) at the time when the demand
for fish is increasing both internally and internationally.
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