Economics of fish feed production for cage culture in Jharkhand.

Abstract

In intensive aquaculture system feed is the single most crucial input factor which has profound influence indetermining the cost of production and profitability margin. The present study investigates into the economic performance offeed mills established by Directorate of fisheries, Jharkhand with an objective to reduce farmers dependency on exorbitantlypriced commercial feeds. The results showed that for establishing a feed mill with a capacity of 1 quintal/hr approximatelyrequires an investment of Rs. 40.50 lakhs. The major chunk of investment was incurred in establishing the building whichhouses the feed mill followed by feed mill itself which was Rs.20 lakhs (49.38%) and Rs.15 lakhs (37.04%) respectively. Thecosts and returns analysis revealed that variable cost accounts about 68.91 percent while fixed cost accounts 31.09 percent tothe total cost (Rs. 55 lakhs), respectively. Among variable cost raw material for feed accounts 39.07 percent of which maizeaccounts about 20.41 percent to the total cost of production. The feed mills were found to be operating at suboptimal level whichwas evident from BC ratio of 0.43 and 0.86 considering with and without subsidy, which is 50 percent on feed sold to the farmers.However the feed mills was observed to recover its variable cost without considering the subsidy, which indicates in long runfeed mill is expected to improve its performance as fixed cost declines in long run. It is recommended that feed mill should workin double shifts compared to single which under practiced during the study period eight hours, this will help to improve theperformance of the feed mills.