Research deemed crucial to hike milk fish harvest

“We depend only at the time where we can harvest milk fish, and so based on supply and demand the prices goes down as producers like us harvest at the same time which makes it less profitable,” cited Juventud Chavez the manager of Southern Negros Agri Fisheries Multipurpose Cooperative (SONAMCO).

Last Saturday, the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources VII together with the Department of Science and Technology and the University of the Philippines-Visayas held a “Zonal Network R & D Review and Planning Workshop cum Industry Forum and Technology Road Show” held at the Cebu Grand Hotel from October 10-12.

Chavez was among the speakers for the Industry Forum, which discussed about the problems of the fishery industry on which researchers from both public and private sectors can get insights about probable areas to work on.

In his presentation, Chavez proposed about future researches on enabling a year round milk fish harvest for milk fish growers. He pointed out that with the seasonality of their harvest, players in the industry end up losing so much revenue as competition gets high. He added that if harvest is year round, they will be no longer an oversupply and so the prices will be stable and not go down low.

“We should go beyond the practice and improve our stocks. The researches to be done should be aimed at how we can efficiently grow our stocks so that it will be available in the market year-round,“ Chavez said in an interview.

He added that the kind of researches should make their culturing process shorter to have more fish available for the market. He said that usually in a traditional milk fish farm there is only about 2, 000 to 3, 000 pieces of stock per hectare. For a size that big accommodating so little, he said that this process is not efficient and profitable for them.

He also pointed out that this situation greatly affects their revenues especially affecting small producers as their projected income will no longer be achievable as prices will tend to go down as supply increases.

Chavez also stressed that aside from the seasonality of their produce, the high cost of feeds and marketing of products are a few of the other challenges that the milk fish industry faces these days. Although he recognized the initiative of the Industry Forum as a good exercise for public and industry collaboration, he is hopeful that researches be redirected accordingly to what the industry needs and requires the most.

In Central Visayas, Bohol has the biggest fish pond area. In terms of technology Chavez said that we already have the technology for breeding and raising frays to become fingerlings (1 ½ inches milk fish) and then into a sizeable stock.

He added that in terms of production, we are quite competitive with our Asian neighbors like Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan, which are also into the same kind of industry, and we can say that we are more than advanced in technology and production.