Project Overview
Commodities
- Animals: fish
Practices
- Animal Production: feed formulation, mineral supplements
- Crop Production: organic fertilizers
- Education and Training: demonstration, extension, farmer to farmer, on-farm/ranch research
- Farm Business Management: new enterprise development, cooperatives, budgets/cost and returns, marketing management, agricultural finance, value added
- Production Systems: agroecosystems, holistic management
- Soil Management: composting
- Sustainable Communities: new business opportunities, partnerships, social networks, sustainability measures
Proposal summary:
This SARE project intends to convert fish offal from a fish-processing operation into marketable products including fertilizer, compost, fish and animal feed and chum for commercial fishers. The 30 or so Big Island aquaculture operations, which produce freshwater tilapia and catfish and offshore Pacific threadfin in cages, typically import their feed. The feed created from offal will help reduce that reliance. In addition, the offal will be converted into compost and fertilizer that can be used on coffee and banana farms. The fish-processing operation will benefit by reducing labor costs and the tipping fee to dump the offal at the Hawaii County solid waste facility, and the farmer conducting the SARE project, Takumi Shirakawa, will benefit from using the offal as compost and fertilizer.