ETHIOPIAN INSTITUTE OF

AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH

NATIONAL FISHERY AND AQUATIC LIFE

RESEARCH CENTER (NFALRC)
Extension and Communication Research Directorate
Completed Research Activity Report

By Yared Mesfin .
Nov, 2020
Sebeta
 Activity Title:- Farmers’ Awareness and
Attitude towards Aquaculture

The Case of Wonchi Woreda, Oromia Region, Ethiopia

 Introduction
Awareness is about knowledge of a particular matter in a shallow
perspective . It is the availability of information about a particular issue
(Sarkar and Padaria, 2015) or consciousness of internal and external events
or experiences (Nugent, 2013).

Attitude is individual stands towards certain psychological object . It is a

person’s disposition to react with a certain degree of favorableness or
unfavorableness to any discreditable aspect of the individuals’ world (Ajzen,
2014).

Awareness could be measured by collecting verbal report of a situation

(Timmermans and Cleeremans 2015) and attitude using a range of attitude
statements to select from (Edwards, 1957)
Materials and Methods
DESCRIPTION OF THE STUDY AREA
Altitude:- 2,000-3,000m ASL
Annual Rainfall:- 1,200 mm
Average Annual Temperature:- 18-27
c

Number of Farm Households:- 10,503

(MHHHs= 9,302 & FHHHs= 1,201)

Farming System: Mixed

Crops Mostly Grown= Teff,

Wheat ,Barely and Other Horticultural
Crops

Livestock Rearing: Honey bee, Cattle,

Sheep, and Goat
 SAMPLING AND METHOD OF DATA COLLECTION
Sample size= 105 Farm households (10% of the overall population) fixed due to low
variability of responses at pretest level.
Sampling Strategy:- Both Purposive and Random Sampling Techniques were used
Zone, Woreda and Kebele were selected Purposively. Selection of farmers was done both
purposively and randomly

105 Farm Households

71 MHHHs 34 MHHHs

20 AD 51 NAD 4 AD 30 NAD

AD= Adopters and NAD= Non Adopters

 Methodology
Method of Data Collection
• Semi structured questionnaire and focus groups were used to assess
respondents awareness and attitude towards aquaculture

Method of Data Analysis

• For data analysis, SPSS software version 20 was applied. Meanwhile, both
descriptive and inferential statistics were used. In addition, Likert scale was
used to estimate favorableness and unfavorableness of farmers’ attitude
towards aquaculture.
• 10 items were subject to refinement out of which 6 were finally administered
to the samples
• Awareness was measured based an objective “teacher made test”
administered to the samples, with the expert criteria of assigning samples to
awareness groups

Content Validity
Test of validity for the attitude statements was done using content validation
ratio (CVR) (Lawshe, 1975):
CVR= (ne - N/2) / (N/2)
Where: ne = Number of Panelists designating an item as essential
N= Total number of Panelists participating in a validity pretest
Reliability:- Measure of Internal Consistency of items in the scale. Procedure
suggested by Biggs and Cheek (1986) was used
 Result and Discussion
Socio Demographic Characteristics
S/No Variable Minimum Maximum Mean
1 Age 16 86 40.45
2 Household Size 1 14 5.44

VARIABLES
Sex of HH Level of Education Marital
Status
MHHHs WHHHs NFE Primary Secondary Tertiar Single Married
y
Value 71 34 11 80 14 0 0 105
Percent 67.3 32.7 10.3 75.7 13.1 0 0 100
Status of Farmers’ Awareness of Aquaculture
Farmers’ awareness of aquaculture practices
 Percentage of Respondents by Awareness Category
Number of Household
S/No Awareness by Category Heads Total χ2 Sig
MHHHs WHHHs

No % No % No %

1 Not aware of fish and aquaculture 8 7.6 9 8.6 17 16.2 8.34 0.039
9**
2 Low level of awareness 22 20.9 15 14.3 37 35.2

3 Medium level of awareness 11 10.5 2 1.9 13 12.4

4 High level of awareness 30 28.6 8 7.6 38 36.2

Total 71 67.6 34 32.4 105 100

Attitude items and mean difference between criterion groups

Item Code Mean of High Mean of Low Mean Significance

Groups Groups Difference level
Abns (+) 3.878783 2.07 1.808783 Sig
Frbsbtos(+) 3.933 2.22 1.713 Non-Sig
ffsmiv(-) 3.4375 2.182 1.2555 Non-Sig
ffsmcv(-) 3.0875 1.2632 1.8243 Sig
tnmf(-) 3.7833 2.636 1.1473 Non-Sig
nisia(-) 3.8875 2.692 1.1955 Non Sig
Percentage of respondents’ overall attitude towards fish farming

Favorable Unfavorable
Item Code (Strongly agree+agree) Neutral (Strongly
disagree+disagree)
Abns (+) 92.4% 6.7% 0.9%
Frbsptos(+) 95.3% 3.8% 0.9%
ffsmiv(-) 2.7% 23.7% 73.6%
ffsmcv (-) 25.7% 23.8% 50.5%
tnmf(-) 0 3.8% 96.2%
nisia(-) 1.9% 0.9% 37.8%
 Conclusion and Recommendation
Conclusion
Farmers in the study area, generally have some awareness of fish and
aquaculture but not sufficient

There is a greater disparity in the number of farmers who have low and
high level of awareness in context. This may be attributed to poor farmer to
farmer linkage in relation to fish/aquaculture or nature of the technology
itself .

Unfavorable attitude of farmers towards aquaculture/fish could be

associated with their unaware state in specific aspect of fish/aquaculture
There is low awareness in the nutritional aspect of fish
 Recommendation
 Unique nutritional and health benefit of fish has to be promoted to target
farmers

 Farmer to farmer linkage are so crucial to disseminate aquaculture

technologies further to areas around

 More training is needed to help farmers understand pond management

and dynamics in the study area
 Some species of Fish In Ethiopia

Oreochromis niloticus (Nile Tilapia)

Barbus_cf_stigmatopygus

ባርበስ (ብልጫ)

የናይል ቆረሶ ዓሣ
(Barbus Riverine Fish)

Thank you for Your

(Bargus Riverine Fish)

( Bagrus_docmak)

ከርከሮ ዓሣ
Attention
የወንዝ ዓሣ

Clarias gariepinus (African Catfish)

አምባዛ

Source:- JERBE Photos