Research For The Future Development Of Aquaculture In Ghana

Integrated farming in Asia is either considered an eco-friendly good that should be preserved for environmental reasons or a poor practice that will soon be superseded by industrial aquaculture. This report finds that most livestock-fish integration is sound business conducted by entrepreneurs accessing urban markets where the price of fish is relatively low. It can be used as part of a strategy to reduce environmental impacts of intensive livestock production and to produce low-cost food. Farmers have proved adept at both developing their systems to meet their own needs and diversifying the role of ponds, fish and livestock within their complex livelihoods.

This study provides an overview of the aquaculture sector in Ghana. It assesses the actual and potential contribution of aquaculture to poverty reduction and food security, and identifies enabling conditions for and drivers of the development of Ghana’s aquaculture sector. The study uses data collected from a variety of primary and secondary sources, including key informant interviews with actors within the aquaculture sector and relevant secondary literature.

As the world's demand for food from aquatic environments continues to increase, the importance of performing aquaculture in an environmentally responsible manner also increases. The aim of this important and thought-provoking book is to stimulate discussion among aquaculture's modern scientific, education and extension communities concerning the principles, practices and policies needed to develop ecologically and socially sustainable aquaculture systems worldwide. Ecological Aquaculture provides fascinating and valuable insights into primitive (and often sustainable) culture systems, and ties these to modern large-scale aquaculture systems. The book is edited, and authored to a considerable degree, by Barry Costa-Pierce who has assembled a team of some of the leading thinkers in the field, providing information spanning a spectrum of activities from artisanal to high technology approaches to producing aquatic organisms in a balanced and environmentally-friendly way. Ecological Aquaculture is an essential purchase for all aquaculture personnel involved in commercial, practical and research capacities. Libraries in research establishments and universities where aquaculture, biological, environmental and aquatic sciences are studied and taught should have copies of this book available on their shelves.

Over the past decade, the aquaculture sector in Ghana has experienced tremendous growth—driven mainly by large-scale cage farms—but it has been unclear how the rural poor have shared in this growth. A research project has been initiated to help diagnose, design, and test interventions for better inclusion of the rural poor, women, and youth in the tilapia value chain. This report describes the baseline data on 603 small-scale tilapia farmers in Ghana. The data collected during two-hour face-to-face interviews during May–July 2019 are disaggregated by socioeconomic indicators, gender, and age group. Baseline data show that 9 percent of farm managers and owners were women, and an additional 9 percent of farms engaged women in some decision-making. Moreover, women contributed 16 percent of family labor and 5 percent of hired labor on farms. Youth represented 14 and 24 percent of owners and managers, respectively, but contributed 68 percent of the total family and hired labor on farms. A large majority of managers and owners had at least high school education, with a third of owners and a quarter of managers attaining at least a college degree. In Brong Ahafo and Ashanti regions especially, most farmers engaged mainly in crop farming and non-farm businesses as their main livelihood, with fish farming as a small contributor to overall household income and livelihood. Farmers in all regions had poor record-keeping and management practices and low compliance with sanitation, fish health, and food safety standards. A wide variety of input usage, management practices, and performance was observed among fish farms. As a result, the profitability of fish farms was also wide-ranging, between –12.00 and 46.00 cedi per m2, with an average of 8.82 cedi per m2. Despite wide variability in production and profits, the majority of farmers experienced positive profits. On average, a farmer received a profit of 2.4 cedi per kilogram of tilapia produced or a 27 percent profit margin. These encouraging figures indicate that farmers who adopt good aquaculture practices can achieve respectable profits.

Aquaculture is a rapidly growing, successful approach to improving diets by providing more high quality fish and shellfish protein. It is also an industry with major unresolved issues because of its negative impact on the environment. This book is a pioneering effort in the development of environmentally benign aquaculture methods.

Behavioral-based intervention in designing public policies has become an important field of study in recent years with empirical studies devoted to analyzing how to design better policies from the fields of behavioral economics, social psychology, sociology, anthropology, economy, political science, design (human-centered design and design thinking), or effective state and non-state bureaucracies throughout the world. Therefore, it is important to explore this original research on behavioral policymaking that starts from the development of policies following all the way through to the implementation of them and the many stages in between. Current research on public policy seeks to provide insights and support leadership in public administration within the framework of behavioral science. Behavioral-Based Interventions for Improving Public Policies aims to provide a glimpse of the theoretical frameworks in use and some of the latest practical reported research findings for behavioral-based intervention in designing public policies. The chapters will explore policymaking knowledge applied in different types of communities and cultural environments. While highlighting topic areas that include policymaking, policy infrastructure, and policy adoption, this book is ideally intended for professionals and researchers working in the fields of policymaking, administrative sciences and management, behavioral economics, social psychology, sociology, anthropology, economy, or political science along with practitioners, stakeholders, academicians, and students.