Aquaculturist Glen Thomas and farmer Stephen de la Harpe are developing a plan to encourage Karoo farmers to grow bream in their dams. Not only do they hope to open a new market in the region, it will also benefit the unemployed, writes Steve McVeigh.
IF WHAT HAS BEEN dubbed a “brave project” is successfully implemented, fish, which 250 million years ago lived in the Karoo on a large scale, may once again be found there. Three years ago, Camdeboo farmer Stephen de la Harpe and his partner Glen Thomas, a filmmaker and aquaculturist, started breeding bream in the Karoo. They set up a fishery on the 16ha smallholding Camdeboo Manor about 5km outside of Graaff-Reinet, where Stephen and his wife Liesl live. Today, a number of rustic brick tanks in a converted piggery on the farm house about 20 000 bream fingerlings. The partners are so confident in their fish-breeding enterprise that they have approached the Provincial Local Economic Development Support Programme – a partnership between the EU and the Eastern Cape provincial government – �for funding to establish a large-scale fish breeding cooperative. In their proposal, they outline how they will breed foundation stock and then send fingerlings to satellite sites on farms in the region where the fish can grow to proper size.
Once the fish are ready to be harvested, the partners, trading as Camdeboo Bream CC, will buy back the fish from the farmers and process them for sale. A bold three-year plan The plan is called the Camdeboo Satellite Aquaculture Project (CSAP), and they envisage setting up 50 satellite fisheries in the next three years. Glen says that the Karoo conditions are what make it possible to grow bream there. Bream are a warm-water fish species that thrive in temperatures of between 26ºC and 32ºC, and can flourish in water of up to 36ºC. The cloudless Karoo winters will also allow fish farmers to “solar heat” the water for bream production if the winters are too cold. The dry conditions also mean that plenty of concrete reservoirs and large water impound dams can be found in the region – all potential fish production opportunities just waiting to be utilised. Glen says farmers must remember that fish don’t consume water, they simply live in it. And if the water is to be used on crops, the nutrient enrichment by the fish can only be beneficial. The CSAP is still in the planning phase and sites for the fisheries must still be identified, as well as environmental assessments conducted. But Glen and Stephen have already done most of the hard work, proving that the bream can survive in the harsh Karoo environment.
By selecting fish from their existing stock through natural selection, the fish that survive the cold winters will become the foundation stock for the satellite farms. The first phase of the CSAP will be to build a hatchery at Camdeboo Manor that can produce about 1,5 million fingerlings a year. These will be farmed out to the satellite growers when they are between 80g and 100g for cage culture, and for indoor recirculating systems when they are 20g. Giving back and going strong The vision for the project is that the satellite growing facilities will empower the unemployed wives of farmworkers. Grahamstown-based company Aquaculture Innovations has been earmarked to train the people who will work at the different satellite fisheries. A training schedule and a manual to assist workers on site will also be drawn up.
From dreaming to seeing the vision It’s envisaged that the individual satellite fisheries will utilise existing infrastructure. Where borehole water and disused farm sheds are available, fish can be grown in brick-and-mortar tanks, as well as in reservoirs. As an affordable way to farm the fish, floating cages can be used in large water storage dams. They also a plan to set up a central processing plant to process the fish once they are harvestable. A marketing plan to introduce the fish as a fresh product to the Karoo market and the rest of the country has also already been worked out. Contact Glen Thomas on 082 455 3866 or e-mail [email protected], or visit www.bream.co.za. |fw
