Dedito Rica, together with his men, harvests tilapia by using a dip net from his backyard pond in Carmen town. (CONTRIBUTED)
Dedito Rica of Barangay Can-ibuang, Catmon town has been engaging in different ventures until he found a fortune in his own backyard.
Rica said he has held different jobs, including running his own retail store.
Then in 2014, his brother who is an employee of the Cebu Provincial government, informed him of the government’s inland fishery program.
“Giingnan ko niya nga duol sa pinakaduol nga office of agriculture diha (He told me to go to the nearest agriculture office here),” he said.
Rica underwent training on tilapia farming in the neighboring town of Carmen. After the training, Dedito, 54, established his own tilapia pond in April 2014 through the assistance from the Capitol and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR).
In his first year of harvest, Rica earned P96,000 from 800 kilos of tilapia from his three fishponds that have a total area of 300 square meters.
Aside from selling fresh tilapia, Rica also sells tocino-flavored, hot and spicy, as well as regular dried tilapia.
The dried tilapia is sold for P400 per kilo. Rica does not produce dried fish regularly for it entails more hours of work. But his penchant for making dried fish earned him additional income.
He said their relatives abroad have tasted his dried tilapia during their vacation in Cebu. And when they went back abroad, they brought some of it and gave it to their neighbors and friends.
Since then, Rica said he has been receiving orders. Interested buyers may contact Marybeth Nacional of the Catmon agriculture office.
A father of three, Rica said the tilapia pond is a big help in augmenting the family’s income.
Aside from maintaining his own pond, Rica also produces tilapia fries for fellow tilapia fish farmers or for those who wanted to establish backyard ponds.
There are around 50 individuals in Catmon who established backyard tilapia pond and 16 associations that operate communal ponds.
Nacional thanked the Capitol for helping sustain the tilapia farming in the town.
The Capitol does not only provide trainings, inputs, including feeds, but also monitor the progress of the ponds.
In 2015, the Provincial Agriculture Office was able to establish 10 more communal ponds, and 27 communal ponds with 480 cooperators being maintained.
It also established 156 backyard ponds with 530 ponds being maintained. It distributed a total of 1,255 bags of feeds and dispersed more than a million of tilapia fries in coordination with BFAR and Regional Fisheries Training Center.
The local government units, through their respective agriculture office, also provided assistance like trainings and distribution of feeds.