Adoption of sustainable capture based aquaculture practices by traditionalfishermen of Karnataka

Abstract

Capture Based Aquaculture (CBA) has emerged as the optimal solution to meet India's ever growing demand for protein foodsecurity, besides providing additional income to rural fishermen during the lean seasons. The following study documents theadoption of sustainable CBA in traditional farming systems with minimum inputs. The fish farmer being the end user in thetechnology adoption process, an empirical evaluation of the concept of sustainability is important in reducing the productioncosts, in harnessing environmental benefits and ensuring stable fish production. The reliability of Farmer SustainabilityIndex (FSI) to measure the adoption of sustainable practices in capture based aquaculture was measured using CronbachsCoefficient of Alpha which worked out to 0.97, indicating a high index of reliability of the method used. The FSI constructedwas administered to 40 traditional fishermen adopting CBA at Uppunda village of Kundapura taluk of coastal Karnataka.The overall mean FSI index for all the six practices from cage fabrication to harvest was 77.95, indicating a relatively highvalue of Farmer Sustainability Index for adoption of CBA practices.