Seawater-Farmed Tilapia

In this article, the second in a two-part series, Ramon Kourie and Vuyani Somyo of Thapi AquaKulcha show how seawater-farmed Mozambique tilapia can provide cheaper protein than broilers or other livestock.

- By Ramon Kourie, Vuyani Somyo

It is no secret that food-insecure households in South Africa are finding it increasingly difficult to include animal protein in their daily diets, not least because of the COVID-19 pandemic and rising food prices.

From approximately 2005/06, broiler chickens began beating marine-capture fish to become the cheapest animal protein source in the country (tinned pilchards are excluded from this comparison). This is despite the 50% to 100% price spread between the large-scale producer costs at the base of the broiler chicken value chain and supermarket retail prices for frozen dressed birds hovering between R45/g and R55/kg.

At the same time, there appears to be opportunities for small- and medium-scale broiler producers, despite higher feed, abattoir and other input costs, to retail directly to consumers, bypassing the formal value chain.

Using the small-scale producer cost model, Thapi AquaKulcha (Thapi) has estimated the ex-abattoir cost of broiler birds to be between R29/ kg and R31/ kg live birds. For comparison, Thapi used a figure of R30,22/ kg after added abattoir costs, converted to an edible meat yield of 46,1%.

THE PROJECT HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BE HIGHLY COMPETITIVE, WITH A FARM GATE BREAK-EVEN PRODUCTION COST OF R15/KG LIVE WEIGHT