7. Contribution of Rural Aquaculture to Rural Development

7.1 Contribution to Food and Nutrition
7.2 Contribution to Employment
7.3 Contribution to Income Generation
7.4. Women in Rural Aquaculture

7.1 Contribution to Food and Nutrition

Aquaculture unlike agriculture does not yield in comparable quantitative terms but qualitatively it has no parallel. It is well known that fish is a wholesome food and highly nutritive. It is a rich source of protein (crude protein in the range of 14.2-22.8%.) with all essential amino acids. Besides being a good source of calcium and vitamin A, fish is also having vitamin B 12. It contains fat as high as 6% and also has high energy content. It is also a rich source of essential fatty acids and polyunsaturated fatty acids. It is said that those eating adequate amount of fish, have shining eyes and hair, a sign of better health. This is well reflected in the population of the fishing villages.

Present aquaculture production in the country not only increased export earning, but also added domestic supply, resulting in 8 kg per capita consumption as compared to only 2.8 kg annually in 1974(George and Sinha l975). However, the Indian Council of Medical Research has recommended 12 kg. So, the country has a long way to go in meeting the recommended standard.

Table 8. Monthly per capita consumption of fish in different states of India

State/UT*	Quantity (0.00 kg)	Rural No. of household reporting fish consumption per 1,000 household	Quantity (0.00 kg)	Urban No. of household reporting fish consumption per 1000 household
Andhra Pradesh	0.07	240	0.08	221
Assam	0.43	894	0.44	750
Bihar	0.0.8	291	0.13	336
Gujarat	0.02	79	0.02	87
Haryana			0.02	36
Himachal Pradesh	0.01	24	0.02	36
Jammu & Kashmir	0-0.2	69	0.05	119
Karnataka	0.08	116	0.07	114
Kerala	1.06	829	1.59	812
Madhya Pradesh	0.041	143	0.05	143
Maharashtra	0.08	160	0.14	253
Manipur	0.21	637	0.25	856
Meghalaya	0.18	584	0.37	777
Nagaland	-	-	0.22	547
Orissa	0.20	517	0.32	614
Punjab	-	5	-	4
Rajasthan		5	0.01	32
Sikkim	0.01	41	0.08	176
Tamil Nadu	0.12	206	0.11	320
Tripura	0.60	921	0.68	937
Uttar Pradesh	0.04	109	0.02	52
West Bengal	0.47	848	0.66	784
Andaman &-, Nicobar	1.52	806	1.06	723
ArunAchal Pradesh	0.30	569	0.28	521
Chandigarh	-	-		5
Dadar & Nagar Haveli	0.12	569	-	-
Delhi	-	34	0.03	44
Goa	1.22	926	1.38	723
Lakshadweep	4.26	888	3.38	736
Mizoram	0.08	252	0.04	148
Pondicherry	0.31	806	0.44	809
All India	0.15	282	0.17	262

* UT - Union Territories
Source: Hand book on fisheries statistics 1996, Gov. of India

In certain states like U.P., Andaman Nicobar, Arunanchal Pradesh and Lakshwadeep and Mizoram, the consumption level is higher in rural sector whereas in Bihar, Kerala, Orissa, WestBengal, Maharashtra, Megalaya, Sikkim and Pondicherry urban sector consumes more. These disparities may be related more to the tradition, or socio-religious reasons, or on the degree of market development. In fact, the Haryana and Rajasthan the consumption is entirely in the urban sector where people migrated from other states form the major consumer group. This is also true for Chandigarh and Nagaland

7.2 Contribution to Employment

After achieving self-sufficiency in food production, agriculture development in the country has been directed to improve the productivity, and to attain sustainability. It also stressed on to generate rural employment and income to increase the rural purchasing power. In this context aquaculture becomes an important sector in providing rural employment.

Labour use by type and enterprises based on some case studies involving aquaculture and other farming systems is shown in the following tables, which indicate the potential of labor engagement in rural aquaculture.

Case studies: (labour use in man day/ha/yr)

a) Paddy-cum fish culture

	Farm size (ha)	Farm labour	Family/hired	Gender/Male/female	Enterprise/labour	Potential requirement
1.	0.24	163	120/43	130/33	Paddy/43 Fish/l20	179 500
2.	0.60	264	194/70	228/38	Paddy/48 Fish/216	80 360
3.	0.40	432	344/88	266/166	Paddy/32 Fish/400	80 1,000
4.	0.20	96	80/16	70/26	Paddy/16 Fish/80	80 400

b) Horticulture (Coconut plantation on Embankment) and fish

	Farm size (ha)	Farm labour	Family/hired	Gender/Male/female	Enterprise/labour	Potential requirement
1.	0.40	120	120/nil	60/60	Fish/100 Horticulture/20	250

c) Fish and dairy

	Farm size (ha)	Farm labour	Family/hired	Gender/Male/female	Enterprise/labour	Potential requirement
1.	0.7 Ponds 0.8 Land	720	420/300	500/220	Fish/245 Dairy/475	350 593

d) Fish-paddy-vegetable

	Farm size (ha)	Farm labour	Family/hired	Gender/Male/female	Enterprise/labour	Potential requirement
1.	0.75 Pond	272	272/nil	217/55	Fish/110 paddy & vegetable/154	157
	0.153 Land					1006
2.	0.6	210	130/80	210/nil	Fish/150 vegetable & paddy/60	250 100

e) Livestock-fish and plantation

	Farm size (ha)	Farm labour	Family/ hired	Geder/Male/female	Enterprise/ labour	Potential requirement
1.	0.70 Pond	625	50/575	420/155	Fish/550	785
	0.01 Cattleshed				Livestock/50	*
	0.09 Orchard				Plantation/25	277
2.	0.3 Pond	280	80/200	230/50	Fish/140	466
	0.05 Cattleshed				Livestock/70	*
	0.15 Orchard				Plantation/70	466
3.	1	2040	400/1,640	1,540/500	Fish/940	940
					Livestock/500	*
					Plantation/600	600
4.	0.24 Pond	151	151/nil	91/60	Fishseed/10	416
	.040 Plantation				Livestock/32	*
					Plantation/109	2,725
5.	0.4 Pond	750	4/746	664/84	Fish/100	250
	0.2 Plantation				Livestock/450	*
					Plantation/200	100
6.	5 Pond	1000	Nil/1000	620/380	Fish/300	60
	4 Orchard				Livestock/350
					Plantation/350	87
7.	0.4 Pond	1200	490/710	Mostly male	Fish/50	125
					Livestock/80	*
					Plantation/350	**

	*	Potential man day was not calculated because it is not related with hectarage.
	**	Because of paucity of data potential requirements were not calculated.

f) Fish-crop-horticulture-livestock-forestry

	Farm size (ha)	Farm labour	Family/hired	Gender/ Male/female	Enterprise/ labour	Potential requirement
1.	0.8 Pond	2,800	2,080/720	2,000/800	Paddy/200	Fish/875
	3.07 Land				Horitculture/1,500
					Forestry/100
					Fish Culture/700
2.	0.4 Pond	1,340	870/470	1,135/205	Livestock/800	-
	0.4 Land				Horticulture & Forestry/370	925
					Fish/170	425
3.	0.8 Pond	1,650	500/1,150	Mostly	Fish/400	500
	1.6 ha for			males	Livestock/750	-
	Horticulture & Forestry				Horticulture & Forestry/400	-
	1.33 Paddy				Paddy/100	-

The above case studies indicated that under extensive paddy cum fish/shrimp culture, fish culture component engaged as high as 1000 man day/ha. compared to about 179 man days for paddy. Similarly, coconut plantation and fish culture showed more or less the same ratio.

Carp culture and dairy showed that compared to dairy, fish culture needed about half the labor requirement. Farming of paddy/fish/and vegetable showed high labor engagement in vegetable growing than fish. But, in any case, fish culture showed as high as 950-man days/ha.

Labor engagement indeed depends on many factors such as supervision, skill, degree of management and input supply etc. But almost all case studies involving fish culture showed considerable amount of labour engagement. On the basis of which it could be fairly said that fish culture in one hectare pond would provide at least 1 man full time employment. Estimated direct full-time regular employment in culture operations alone should, therefore, be about 0.8 million persons.

Estimate of additional employment

About 0.844 million hectares are presently under fish culture with the national average rate of fish production of 1.8 ton/ha/yr (Ayyappan-Personal communication) and a total fish production of 1.52 million tons of which, the FFDA program has covered 0.42 million of water area with an average rate of production of 2183kg/ha/yr, resulting in a total production of 0.921 million tons. Thus, farmers other than those trained by the FFDA are producing the rest of about 0.6 million tons of fish from another 0.42 million hectares.

Though, FFDAs have trained 0.53 million farmers but the program has benefited over 0.78 million and it is assumed that they have been gainfully engaged in rural aquaculture

On the basis of the above, the estimation of employment generation in this sector is as follows:

Employment generation through freshwater rural aquaculture

		Million persons/vr
1.	Regular full-time employment to operate the total 1.2 million ha offish ponds (assuming 1 person per ha)	1.2
2.	Casual labourer on daily payment basis for pond repair/preparation, stocking and harvesting 0.844 million ha @ 110 man-day/ha/yr	0.25
3.	Marketing offish, assuming that marketing of 11 tons of fish per yr provides full-time job for one person	0.138
4.	Production and supply of inputs such as finger-lings, feed, fertilizer, etc. Estimation based on cost of inputs of production and supply, and the labour cost as a percentage of that cost.	0.10
	Total Estimated Employment	1.688

Employment in brackishwater rural aquaculture

Mr. Tharakan, President of Seafood Exporters Association of India, in 1996, estimated that over Rs. 20, 000 million have been invested by small and medium scale Indian entrepreneurs in brackishwater aquaculture in recent years. And over 200,000 unemployed labourers were gainfully employed in the sector. However this estimate seems to be for the whole sector and not necessarily for the rural aquaculture.

However, it is estimated that traditional shrimp culture in over 52500 ha yielding about 21000 tons of shrimp would generate the following employment opportunities:

		No. of Jobs
1.	BFDA trained farmers	15,000 Jobs
2.	Fish farmers undertaking traditional culture @1 ha/1 person in 52,500 ha	52,500 Jobs
3.	Daily wage labourer at least @ 110 manday/ha/yr	15,600 Jobs
4.	It is assumed that marketing of 2 tons of shrimp would generate one full-time employment.
	Accordingly, marketing of 21,000 tons of fish would generate job for	10,500 Jobs
	Total jobs in brackishwater Rural Aquaculture	93,000 Jobs

Thus, an estimated total of about 0.093 million jobs are expected to be in the brackish water sector. However, traditional culture may not create much job opportunity because not much renovation or excavation is involved. Similarly, employment through support services for seed and/or feed would be negligible because of the whole operation depends upon natural seed and feed.

7.3 Contribution to Income Generation

Generally, farmers who possess small land holding, pond and a few cattle do not concentrate only on one commodity or enterprise, rather they undertake some sort of integrated farming where by product of one subsystem becomes the input of other and vice versa. Thus, they achieve increased productivity from land, labour, water and waste (Sinha 1991). Similarly, water in the pond meant for irrigating other agriculture crop, when utilized simultaneously for fish culture it results in augmenting farmers’ income and productivity of terrestrial crop. Fish culture concurrent with paddy cultivation, yields fish and also increases paddy production to about 10 percent.

Chapter 2 and 3 dealt with certain case studies that clearly indicate the income generation capacity of fish culture. However, still more case studies have been analyzed and presented in the following tables showing a comparative account of net income, cost return ratio and percentage return through different commodities with which farmers are involved.

The following tables show enterprise, net income, cost return ratio and percentage return on expenditure under rural aquaculture:

Case studies

a) Paddy cum fish culture

No.	Enterprise	Value/Cost of Production (Rs)	Net Income (Rs)	Cost return Ratio	% Return on expenditure
1	Paddy	300/154	146	1.05	94
	Fish	1,600/700	900	0.77	128
2	Paddy	1,698/600	1,098	0.54	199
	Fish	11,998/400	798	0.50	199
3	Paddy	10,00/650	350	1.85	53
	Fish	2,300/1950	350	5.57	17.9
4	Paddy	200/63	137	0.45	217
	Fish	8,50/270	580	0.46	214

b) Horticulture (coconut plantation on embankment) and fish culture

No.	Enterprise	Value/Cost of Production (Rs)	Net Income (Rs)	Cost return Ratio	% Return on expenditure
1	Horticulture (not yet harvested)	--	--	--	--
	Fish	2,100/350	1,750	0.2	500

c) Fish and dairy

No:	Enterprise	Value/Cost of Production (Rs)	Net Income (Rs)	Cost return Ratio	% Return on expenditure
1	Dairy	55,200/11,650	43,550	0.26	373
	Fish	15,700/4,940	10,760	0.45	217

d) Fish-paddy-vegetable

No.	Enterprise	Value/Cost of Production (Rs)	Net Income (Rs)	Cost return Ratio	% Return on expenditure
1	Paddy + Vegetable	4047/1573	2474	0.63	157
	Fish	25,000/947	24,053	0.039	2,530
2	Paddy + Vegetable	1,900/700	1,200	0.58	171
	Fish	55,00/1150	4,350	0.26	378

e) Livestock-fish and plantation

No:	Enterprise	Value/Cost of Production (Rs)	Net Income (Rs)	Cost return Ratio	% Return on expenditure
1	Fish	20,000/6250	13,750	0.45	220
	Livestock	2,000/1600	400	4	25
	Plantation crop	1,000/650	350	1.87	53
2	Fish	10,000/3,480	6,520	0.53	187
	Livestock	3,000/1,900	1,100	1.72	57
	Plantation crop	3,000/600	2,400	0.25	400

f) Fish-crop-horticulture-livestock-forestry

No.	Enterprise	Value/Cost of Production (Rs)	Net Income (Rs)	Cost return Ratio	% Return on expenditure
1	Fish	33,000/6,865	26,135	0.26	380
	Wheat	8,000/3,760	4,240	0.88	112
	Paddy	26,000/12,630	13,370	0.94	105
	Pulses	2,000/713	1,287	0.55	180
	Plantation & Forestry	19,000/1,990	17,010	0.11	854
	Milk	4,100/3,190	900	3.5	28
2	Fish	40,000/7,000	33,000	0.21	471
	Paddy	15,000/4,600	10,400	0.44	226
	Horticulture	50,000/22,400	27,600	0.81	123
	Forestry	5,000/1,100	3,900	0.28	354
	Livestock	18,000/3800	14,200	0.26	373
3	Fish	20,000/3,500	16,500	0.21	471
	Horticulture	8,000/2,775	5,225	0.53	188
	Forestry	1,000/100	900	0.11	900
	Livestock	12,000/4,800	7,200	0.66	150

Farmers undertaking brackishwater paddy-fish culture showed the range of cost return ratio varying between 0.46 to 5.57 for fish and 1.85 to 0.45 for paddy. Exceptionally high value of 5.57 in case of fish was mainly because of poor supervision of the labor component. However, net return ranging Rs. 350 to 900 was an additional income from the same paddy field without any input except of labour.

Farmers who bought the desired seed and fed the fish to a limited extent made a net profit of Rs. 1750 and obtained a cost return ratio of 0.2 and percent return on expenditure as 500. Similarly, dairy farmers who undertook carp culture obtained the cost return ratio of fish as 0.45 with 217% of return on expenditure.

Paddy farmers undertaking fish culture and also growing vegetable around pond embankment obtained cost return ratio ranging from 0.039 to 0.26, with percentage on return ranging from 378 to 2530. Exceptionally high percentage of return on expenditure is mainly because of massive extension support to farmers to undertake scientific fish culture.

Livestock farmers undertaking fish culture and horticulture obtained cost return ratio for aquaculture in the range of 0.21 to 1.35 and percentage return on expenditure as 73 to 475. Similarly, farmers undertaking horticulture, forestry and fish culture obtained same range of rate of cost return ratio and percent return on expenditure for aquaculture.

These case studies conclusively indicated fish culture role in increasing the income of farmers who undertook aquaculture along with other agricultural activities. The magnitude of the income depended on many factors such as infrastructure facilities, skill of the farmers, intensity of management and the quantum of input but in all most all cases fish culture gave a better return.

7.4. Women in Rural Aquaculture

Women form about 48% of the total population in India. About 78% of them are economically active and are engaged in agriculture and allied fields. They are deeply involved in food related activities including food production and thus they are more concerned towards food security of their families by way of producing/procuring food, feed and fodder, maintaining live stock and raising kitchen garden and orchids.

Some recent estimates showed that India possesses about 314.9 million total work force of which 91.4 million are women workers. Of which 81.5 million are in the rural sector and 9.9 million in the urban sector.

All the rural work force is not always employed for about 240 days in a year. Hardly about 285.4 million are employed for about 180 days work/year. Of which about 16.2% are female. Among them 34.6% are cultivators, 43.6% farm labourers and 4.6% are engaged in sectors like livestock, fisheries, poultry etc.

Mechanization of agriculture sector with increasing use of tractors, transplanter, weeder, harvestors, thrasher and dehulling mill etc has threatened the women’s employment opportunities. In this context, aquaculture sector opens up the possibility of alternate employment for men and women alike.

Analyses of some case studies have been presented below to show the type of labour and gender involved in rural aquaculture.

Table showing labour use by type and gender.

Labour by type and sex

No.	Hired			Family
	Male	Female	Total	Male	Female	Total
1	50	20	70	130	16	146
2	40	40	80	200	120	320
3	Nil	Nil	Nil	60	20	80
4	65	Nil	65	10	Nil	10
5	Nil	Nil	Nil	60	40	100
6	Nil	Nil	Nil	115	Nil	115
7	Nil	Nil	Nil	150	Nil	150
8	120	5	125	100	20	120
9*				450	100	550
10*				120	20	140
11*				940		940
12	Nil	Nil	Nil	6	6	12
13	Nil	Nil	Nil	88	12	100
14	220	80	300	Nil	Nil	Nil
15	350	Nil	350	30	Nil	30
16	300	Nil	300	400	Nil	Nil
17	70	Nil	70	100	Nil	100
18	350	Nil	350	50	Nil	50

* Not separated between hired and family labourers.

Family labor showed much more women involvement. Of 18 cases 9 cases showed female involvement and male to female involvement went as high as 40%. However, possibility of their involvement has been considerable. Sinha (1990) indicated the following areas where women could be involved profitably.

• Net making
• Carp breeding
• Hatchery management
• Carp fry rearing
• Composite fish culture
• Paddy cum fish culture
• Air breathing fish culture
• Prawn seed raising
• Prawn culture
• Aquarium fish breeding
• Aquarium keeping
• Integrated fish farming

In 1997, the KVK/FARTC, for the first time, organized training programme in aquaculture for women. Since then organization of such programmes became a regular practice. The KVK also operated a science and technology project for training of women in villages of Puri district in Orissa during 1986-89. Under the project women were trained in different aspect of aquaculture including net mending.

The CIFA also successfully completed a special project on aquaculture funded by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in three districts of Orissa viz. Keonjhar, Nayagard, and Malkangiri during 1992-96. The project enhanced the technical skills in aquaculture of over 300 women (Bhanot et al 1998).