By Antynet Ford

MarineBio has doubled its profits this year after starting using water from its fishponds to grow salad vegetables in plastic troughs, delivering water rich in natural fertilizer from the fish.

“We started the planting of the salad vegetables including lettuce, baby spinach among the rest in January this year. In a month after the planting we made our first sale to hotels around us who required salads. The sale has been increasing over time and it’s really nice as the year is almost ending. The profits are double what it was in January,” said Dan Odhiambo, an agronomist and a farmer at MarineBio.

The farm now produces catfish, Azolla for feed, and salad vegetables in one system. Water from the fish tanks is pumped to frames of plastic troughs, where lettuce, spinach, and herbs take up the nutrients. The clean water then goes back to the fish.

“This system works like nature, every output becomes an input,” said Dan.

The salad is being grown without soil, in a method called hydroponics, where plants grow in richly fertilised water alone. 

“Hotels want clean and fresh vegetables for salads and that’s what hydroponics actually gives. We rear catfish in the ponds because they are cheaper and not as delicate as tilapia. The catfish are reared in the Azolla we make in the ponds. The Azolla is used to feed the chicken we rear and the fish too,” he said.

Azolla has become one of the farm’s main products. “Apart from using it on our farm, we sell Azolla to farmers who want to produce their own for their chicken and fish feed. For a kg, it’s Sh500 and a half a kg at Sh250,” said Dan.

Using Azolla has cut the farm’s feed costs by nearly half. 

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MarineBio now installs similar systems for other farmers. The aquaponics unit costs Sh60,000, while the combined aquaponic-hydroponic system costs Sh90,000. Dan said they train farmers in different counties on using less water and land while keeping production steady.

The company also runs a demonstration site in Gitaru, where farmers learn how the system works and how they can use it on their own farms.

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