SEED INDUSTRY
The seed
industry in Nigeria may be classified for convenience into:
·
Small-scale producers
·
Medium-scale producers and
·
Large-scale producers
Each
scale of production is defined by level of investment available facility,
technical competence of manager and consequently the quantity of seed produced.
In this way a combination of all these factors will be used to categorize each
seed producer. For instance, a farm or hatchery with high investment in
infrastructure but with an incompetent and poorly remunerated manager with
resultant poor production will only qualify as a small-scale producer while a
modest hatchery with high capacity utilization in term of high production may
be a medium- or even a large-scale producer.
3.5.1 SMALL-SCALE
PRODUCERS
Seed
producers who are able to at least
produce enough to satisfy their own immediate needs, and depending on the size
of their own farm may have up to about 20 000 fingerlings for sale to other
farmers, during a production season, could be classified as small-scale
producers. These categories of producers do not always have an indoor hatchery,
but may have, in most cases, few outdoor concrete tanks, usually for spawning
and rearing of fry. These may also be completed ponds can also double as
breeding ponds.
These ponds are usually between 100 m2
and 200 m2 and not more than three or four in number. The
species could be single species (monoculture) or mixed (polyculture). There are
about 1 500 of these small-scale producers in Nigeria mostly in the southeast
and north central zones and are responsible for about 20 percent of total seed
supply to the system. The average annual investment for this seed production
system is usually less than N100 000 (US$600.00). This investment can be
recovered form the proportion of the fingerlings sold out to other farmers.
CALL 08032861326 FOR HELP AND CONSULTANCY.
