During the WorldFish workshop on Nutrition-Sensitive Fish Agri-food Systems in Malawi, the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development revealed that it is working on implementing strategies to boost sustainable fish production and marketing to ensure easy access by consumers.

According to Director in the ministry Patrick Chikungwa,   government is looking at an ecosystem approach to increase production that will eventually bring down the cost of fish by promoting aquaculture for small farmers who use dams and technologies to produce fish for the market.

Last year, the fisheries sector saw scarcity of Fish in the Lake, a misfortune that lead to price increase. Speaking in Lilongwe on Wednesday at the start of a two-day forum on the ‘Role of Ecosystem-based Fisheries Management (EBFM)’, Chikungwa stated that there was a decline in fish, also confirmed by Department of Fisheries director Friday Njaya.

First-round agricultural estimates as released by the government show a 19.1% decrease in that fish production, from 202 092 metric tonnes to 169 140 metric tonnes, representing a 19.1 percent decrease. On the other hand, aquaculture production has been on the increase from 7 876MT in 2018/2019 season to 8 766MT in 2019/2020 season for both large scale and small-scale aquaculture. WorldFish is an international research organisation that focuses on fish and aquatic foods for the sustainable improvement of aquaculture and world fisheries.