No technical data available in Belize on Tilapia Fish Farming.

Edmund Castro, the UDP politician promoting fish farming all over the country to poor farmers as an income maker.



FISH FARM POND INVESTOR CUSSES THE VERY NAME OF EDMUND CASTRO in BELIZE.

This story is second hand, but I met a farmer the other day on the Spanish Lookout side, that has a friend that took his life savings and borrowed against his assets from the bank to go into fish farming Tilapia. I was told the name, but didn’t know the person and forgot the name, but the story brought a sad chuckle, from my own experiences of life in Belize.
Seems like he believed the bureaucrats propoganda and the politician Edmund Castro bombast and went into fish farming ponds of Tilapia. He was now bankrupt. Said he never could get sufficient production of Tilapia to take care of overhead operational costs and diseases kept interfering with his pond Tilapia. He curses the very ground that Edmund Castro, the politician promoting Tilapia pond fish farming all over the country stands and walks over. Wished he had never listened to his spiel.
There goes an example of what can happen to the unwary, and the inexperienced young naïve person, among the 5000 graduates this year, that think they have a good thing to invest in. First thing do your feasibility study. Next thing if you have a hard nosed salesman like Edmund Castro selling you something, take the time to ask him how many Tilapia fish farm ponds he has and some technical details. If you are going to try it, get some scientific and technical data from somebody in the business who has been successful. Bottom line, you have to show a healthy profit in any entrepreneurial endeavor, before you ever get out of the trial and experimental small scale, backyard, pilot project scale. NEVER borrow loan money to go into an experimental unproved new enterprise. You must use risk capital, perhaps some few shares sold to family and friends. Be prepared to lose it all. Take your time and do it right until you figure out the glitches that nobody ever talks about.
The secret is to scale up, bit by bit in increments. This takes a lot of your time and you also have to have a day job in the mean time, to live off. Any enterprise should be a part time endeavor while you start, test and experiment and learn what is possible. Life in the tropics and in Belize has lots of unexpected glitches you must overcome. I’ve been waiting to go into Tilipia fish farming myself for over eight years, but I have never seen anybody make any money at it so far. Until they do, I shall wait on the sidelines and keep my savings in the bank. Even my enquiries and test models on paper have shown me, that so far I cannot get enough production of fish filet per cubic yard of water, to make it worthwhile yet. I have no doubt it can be done, but so far never been able to figure out the technical details of HOW?