Profitability of Small-Scale Integrated Fish-Rice-Poultry Farms in Cameroon

There are increasing efforts from diverse national and international stakeholders promoting integrated aquaculture for its merit in meeting triple needs of food production, social relevance and environmental stability. This research studies 120 aquaculture producers in the Southwest and Northwest regions of Cameroon. The hypothesis is that socioeconomic parameters influence farmers’ selection of an enterprise mix amongst fish-rice-poultry that will maximize revenue. A revenue equation is estimated by imposing a Cobb-Douglas functional form. About 35% of farmers practiced integrated systems, and for those that did not practice in situ – integrated systems, about 65% undertook these different enterprises at different times within the same calendar year. The combination of poultry into fish-rice enterprises is practised as a means to increase farm income through better resource utilization. The systems are overall profitable. When integration is undertaken for two systems either as fish cum rice, fish cum poultry or rice cum poultry farmers realize annual net returns of 428,630 FCFA (US$ 857); 785,650 FCFA (US$ 1,571) and 865,990 FCFA (US$ 1,732), respectively. The highest profits of 965,270 FCFA (US$ 1,931) are obtained in the complete fish-rice-poultry system. Econometric estimates of the revenue function reveal positive and direct relationship with farm revenue for socioeconomic parameters such as plot size, labour, credit, education, land tenure, access to extension and enterprise integration. For dissemination and adoption of this technology there is need for training that exploit pond management and marketing of products from the system.