Aquaculture Africa 2023

November 13 - 16, 2023

Lusaka, Zambia

CONTRIBUTION OF AQUAPONICS TO SUSTAINABLE RURAL HOUSEHOLDS’ FOOD SYSTEM: A CASE IN VHEMBE DISTRICT, LIMPOPO SOUTH AFRICA

By Jethro Zuwarimwe* and Manjoro MM

Institute for Rural Development, Faculty of Science Engineering and Agriculture , University of Venda, South Africa.

Jethro.zuwarimwe@univen.ac.za

 



 

Aquaponics is an intensive  fish and vegetable  production system  operating within the food-water nexus  and recycle water at a rate up to 95 to 99% .  The system  produces  fish and crustaceans  in fishponds with water from the ponds used to irrigate the  vegetables that will be cultivated in a medium other than the soil.  Aquaponics  production system not only contributes to solving climate change challenges  but also produces fish and vegetables using less land and water.  The  production system gives households control over  some components of  their food systems  as  they deci de what to produce and how it will be produced . Aquaponics system  is believed to be important  to  nutrition security  that has been  a challenge to  Africa where more than half of the population cannot afford a healthy diet (WWF, 2019). This te chnology is handy as part of the continent ’s strategy  to produce 50% more food by 2050 to meet  its  food and nutrition needs (WWF, 2019). Researchers concur that aquaponics  is  a candidate  food  production strategy that can  contribute to production of enough food  and improve the livelihoods and wellbeing of the population through the sale of excess fish and vegetables. Th is can be part of the  answers to persistent climate change and variability  challenges  which are constraining the existing food systems, limited capacity of land due to degradation and high cost of inputs. There is growing evidence showing that  existing fish  and vegetable production systems  cannot  meet the  demand  of which climate change and variability is further  complicating the fish and vegetable production capacities . As was also noted by Swap et al, (2002)  in South Africa  there  is  a  near collapse of freshwater  fish production  due to  harsh  environmental conditions.  Interestingly in the whole of South Africa,  Limpopo ranks number one in terms of potential for aquaponics production nationally but is only contributing 1% of aquaponics  national  outputs (DTI 2020). Globally the demand for fish is rising  and  aquaponics is expected to  meet  60% of the demand (DTI 2020). South Africa  has witnessed  a steady annual growth of 8.6%  of the aquaponics outputs  between 2006 and 2016 (DTI 2020).  This  paper presents the  findings from a  study undertaken with  households participating in  aquaponics  projects that were implemented with selected households in Vhembe District Municipality of Limpopo Province in South Africa between 2017 and 2022 .  The specific objective of the paper wa s to analyse the contribution of the aquaculture to participating households’ food systems . The  data was collected in a survey where a structured questionnaire was administered to 3 0 participating households  and 30 households who were not participating in aquaculture production. The quantitative data was analysed using a one-way Analysis of Variance.  The  results show  that that adoption of aquaponics technology result in remarkable improvements in households food systems.  It was concluded that aquaponics adoption and wider uptake may go a long way in contributing to the country’s achievement of  selected SDGs. As was also noted by Love et al. (2015) aquaponics farmers have a guaranteed ready market for the fish and vegetables hence can be a viable strategy to also  improve incomes of smallholder farmers. By and large the technology is pro poor hence  a sustainable way to  reduce poverty  an unsustainable food system among the rural resource poor farmers .  Its  adoption is  therefore being  recommended  to reduce  expenditure by households on  food basket  which  cost more than 65% of the household income of which the savings could be invested into other household needs as was also suggested by Ronquest -Ross et al. (2015).