103 farmers in Lugari Sub-county registered under the Aquaculture Business Development Programme (ABDP) have received 1,000 free fingerlings each to boost production.

The farmers also received 21.5 tonnes of free fish feeds recently under the same programme to promote fish farming in the sub-county.

Lugari Sub County Fisheries Officer Caleb Sifuna called upon the beneficiaries to capitalize on the support to enhance their production capacity.

Speaking in Lumakanda where the selected farmers received the fingerlings, he urged the farmers to stock their ponds and practice proper pond management for higher yields.

“We acquired the fingerlings from LabedCash Marine Enterprise Fish farm which is an authenticated farm that produces quality fingerlings. With this type of fingerlings we expect the farmers to harvest over 10 tonnes in the next nine months which translates to over Kes.4million.” Sifuna stated.

Additionally, he revealed that the beneficiaries have also been issued with record-keeping books to enable them to keep track of all their pond activities.

Further, he said that they will be offering extension services by physically visiting the farmers and through a mobile-based tool that stores information and monitors each farmer to ensure they properly maintain their ponds.

On his part, Lugari aquaculture field school chairman John Kilimi lauded Kakamega County fisheries department for the support aimed at promoting fish farming across the County.

“We are appealing to farmers who have not yet embraced fish farming to come out and join us. Let them come for training and form groups so that they can be assisted to diversify to fish farming,” he said.

The Programme is envisaged as national in scope but targets counties with high concentration of aquaculture activity, high production, existing sectoral infrastructure (processing, marketing and research), adequate water resources and marketing potential.

Under the program, 581 farmers identified in Kakamega County will each receive 1000 monosex tilapia fingerlings.