Andando is an NGO based in Oregon that works with women’s cooperative gardens in Senegal since 2008. Groups consist of about 100-150 women who share plots on 1 hectare of land. Each garden has a hand dug or borehole well and solar pump that fills a 5000L reservoir during the day which distributes water to 6 basins throughout the garden. The women fill their watering cans at these basins and water their small vegetable plots by hand daily. Fish are a vital component of the Senegalese diet both nutritionally and culturally, but access to fresh fish in inland areas is limited and often prohibitively expensive for smallholder farmers. In the hopes of improving access to fish in the area, In 2020, Andando’s local leadership along with women from 4 cooperative gardens in Andando’s Keur Soce region of operation came up with a plan to try adding fish production tanks upstream, of the existing watering basins. In this system water already destined for irrigation purposes can pass through fish holding tanks before flowing to watering basins, thereby facilitating fish production and increasing vegetable outputs due to increased nutrients in the water, without necessitating any increase in daily water usage. The fish holding tank is larger than the watering basins so that only half of the water is removed daily and replenished by the solar pump each afternoon. The fish tanks are each plumbed to two watering basins with water coming from the bottom of the tank to facilitate the evacuation of nutrient rich fish waste.
Thanks to a small grant from the Tankersley Endowment managed by Auburn University, two such fish tanks per garden were installed in each of 4 gardens in the center of Senegal. Additional funding was provided by the Tomberg Families Philanthropies for construction of more fish tanks in gardens in northern Senegal, in Podor, near the border with Mauritania. Improvements were made to facilitate the women entering the tanks to harvest and sample fish and to provide a nursery tanks for nursing fingerlings. A re-training program is planned for 2025 for the original group of 4 gardens and the new groups, who have completed construction.
Production has reached about its maximum possible at 4 kg of marketable fish per square meter (not counting reproduction), given that there is no aeration and the groundwater comes out at only a dissolved oxygen of 3mg/l. The revenue management has also changed to function on a “break-even” basis, based on feed costs. For example, the selling price is calculated at: kgs feed used x feed price/kg divided by kgs fish harvest = selling price per kg fish. This allows women to purchase fish locally at the lowest possible price. So far, no noticeable increase in kgs of vegetables produced per garden with fish has been documented but the value of the production has increased in gardens where there are fish. Various improvements such as switching to clarias and adding solar-powered aeration have been discussed but the women are risk-averse and have decided to stick with tilapia for now, given the constraints in feed supply, clarias fingerling supply and security.