ࡱ> %'$7  bjbjUU "7|7| l     , DDDDDDDDprrrrrr$ DDDDDDDD.DDpDpppD8 ѿd r"pp0pXpTilapia: a good candidate for aquaculture development in Nigeria By *Ojo S O and Akinbogun O O Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, Federal University of Technology, PMB 704, Akure, Nigeria. *e-mail: drojoso@yahoo.com *Telephone numbers: +2348035027301, +2348081099793 Abstract Nigerians are high fish consumers and offer the largest market for fisheries products in Africa because fish is the cheapest source of protein required for essential body functions. Fish production from capture fisheries in spite of its being expensive and risky due to the militancy activities in the coastal line regions of Nigeria has been erratic and on the decline in recent years, resulting in increase in poverty and nutritional deficiency. Aquaculture production remains the best option to bridge the gap between fish demand of 1.5 million tonnes and domestic production of <0.6million tonnes in the face of costly fish imports, high animal protein sources prices and malnutrition. This study examined the factors affecting aquaculture production in Nigeria with emphasis on species of fish stocked, bio-technical and socio-economic factors, profitability, productivity and efficiency of the fish farms. The data for the study were collected from 100 fish farms selected using multistage sampling technique. Methods of data analysis include descriptive statistics, budgetary and stochastic frontier production function analyses. The results revealed that the main species of fish stocked were tilapia and catfish because of their high adaptability to existing bio-technical factors of the study area. Aquaculture was very profitable with a net profit of N128.63/kg. The productivity analysis showed that though some factors were inefficiently allocated, the overall productivity measured by the return-to-scale (RTS) was in the efficient stage of production. The RTS of 0.243 implies that aquaculture production was in the economic relevant region where production should continue with no hindrance. The efficiency analysis showed that the fish farms were highly efficient with average Technical Efficiency of 0.86. The study concluded by advising the fish farmers to pay attention to those factors that have negative elasticity of production and those factors that negatively affect fish farms technical efficiency. b"$. OJQJ^J5OJQJ^JCJOJQJ^JaJABCFGb!"#. $a$$a$  1h/ =!"#$% i8@8 NormalCJ_HaJmH sH tH <A@< Default Paragraph Font ABCFGb!"#. 0000000000000000   GKT]`a Ga 3CGHOabb !"#$ Duncan7C:\Documents and Settings\Duncan8\Desktop\Tilapia 1.doc@HHȔBHG @@UnknownGz Times New Roman5Symbol3& z Arial"qhNF 3PY!20d5  3HP@Tilapia: a good candidate for aquaculture development in NigeriaDr. OjoDuncanOh+'0 ( 8D ` l xATilapia: a good candidate for aquaculture development in NigeriatilaDr. Ojor. r. NormalDuncan11cMicrosoft Word 9.0d@@*3ʽ@ѿP՜.+,08 hp  BOS-DAVES VENTURES5  ATilapia: a good candidate for aquaculture development in Nigeria Title  !"#&Root Entry F`G.ѿ(1Table WordDocument"SummaryInformation(DocumentSummaryInformation8CompObjjObjectPool`G.ѿ`G.ѿ  FMicrosoft Word Document MSWordDocWord.Document.89q