Our First Tilapia Harvest

On March 19, I and my partners went for a partial harvest of our tilapia. At that time the average weight is only 150 grams. By our fish broker's standards, it is considered small. Size affects marketability, the bigger the size, the higher the demand and price. The same is true for the opposite. Despite this fact, we decided to harvest as we already ran out of funds. The almost freezing temperature in the months of January and February has stunted the fish's growth. We needed cash to support the feed requirements of the additional one month culture.

We took this situation as an opportunity to have a first hand experience on the harvesting procedure and the selling of produce. We planned carefully, contacted a reliable broker a week before the harvest and borrowed 70 crates from him. Arranged a truck for transport, purchased a harvesting net and hired 9 people to help in the harvest. We plan to take out 1 ton of tilapia and deliver to Iloilo fresh and alive. To do this we have to reduce our travel time from 1.5 hours to 1 hour.

We started harvesting at around 4 pm. The harvest started by draining the pond until the water level is low enough for easy maneuvering of the harvesting net. The net is dragged around the pond forming an enclosure. The collected fish are then scooped and placed in a feed bag. The fish are then transferred to a separate pond which has a net enclosure. This is to keep the collected fish alive. After the collection is finished, the fish are removed from the collection net and sorted in to two sizes. The large ones are about 5 pieces/kilo while the small ones are about 8 pieces. We finished at around 9:30 pm and we were only able to fill in 45 crates. We wasted no time and immediately proceeded towards Iloilo.

We arrived at the Iloilo Fishing Port ahead of the 11 PM opening time. Upon discharge and display of our produce, it immediately caught the attention of the buyers. The deal between the broker and the buyers is loud and heated. Meanwhile fish from all around Panay Island arrived and we were skeptical as the volume is much larger than we expected. More supply means, less demand. Less demand means lower price. At around 12 MN, the port brimming with fish and people, with prodding from our broker we settled for the price of 80/kilo for the large size and 60/kg for the small ones. The total weight we sold is only 790 kg.

It’s our first foray and to tell you frankly we're very disappointed. We were expecting an average of 80/kilo for the whole produce. After 5 months of hard work we got only 54,000 PHP net worth, less broker commission and miscellaneous service charges.

Disappointment aside we learned a lot though. Here's some:

1. Estimate well the harvest tonnage. We didn't have any idea how much we have exactly removed from the pond. It's pure guess which cost us the low harvested tonnage.

2. Schedule the harvest. We went to the market early, which resulted to the tilapia already dry and dead. If we delayed it for 30 minutes we could have a fresher produce.

3. Sort the fish with more size range. We did only two sizes which limited our bargaining power. Better if we make three size ranges like large, medium and small.

4. Don’t depend on the broker. We have to haggle for the price ourselves.

We estimate to still have around 3 tons of biomass left in the pond. We are reserving it for the Lenten season where the price is expected to jack up to 100/kg as people will forego animal meat and go for fish. As always we hope for the best as we will be making the necessary adjustments for the next harvest to make it profitable and advantageous to us. God willing.

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Cheers. God bless.