It’s You

If you visit any local bar or restaurant in Nigeria, the demand for catfish (point and kill) seems endless. It looks like a goldmine. Yet, for every story of a farmer buying a car from their harvest, there are five stories of farmers selling their tanks and quitting.

Why is there such a gap?

The difference isn’t luck. It is mathematics.

Most small scale farmers operate on a “hope and pray” model: they buy fingerlings, buy expensive imported feed, and hope the market price covers the cost. This article breaks down exactly how one successful farmer moved from a struggling 14% profit margin to hitting the target of ₦1 million in net profit within a single 6 month cycle.

The “Average” Trap: Why Most Don’t Make Millions

To understand how to succeed, you must first look at why the average farmer fails to hit big numbers.

According to recent field data analyzing catfish production in Nigeria, the “average” commercially active farm generates a total revenue of roughly ₦1,185,662 per cycle. That sounds like a lot of cash flow. However, the expenses tell a different story.

The average Total Cost (TC) to produce that fish is ₦1,037,295.

If you do the math, the Net Farm Income is only ₦148,367. That is a Return on Investment (RoI) of just 14%. For six months of hard labor, risk, and stress, earning less than ₦150,000 is not sustainable. In some high cost areas, the production cost per kilogram (₦952.30) is actually higher than the wholesale market price (₦938.96), meaning some farmers unknowingly lose money on every kilogram they sell.

The Culprit: The Feed Inflation Crisis

The single biggest enemy of your profit margin is feed.

Data shows that feed costs consume 63.1% of your total budget. With the price of a 15kg bag of premium imported feed (like Coppens or Skretting) skyrocketing, often exceeding ₦25,000 per bag in 2025, relying 100% on these bags is a financial suicide mission for a small starter.

The farmer who made ₦1 million didn’t just “work harder.” He changed his feed structure.

The Strategy: Localized Protein Production

The “secret” to the ₦1 million profit wasn’t a new breed of fish; it was a new breed of food. The successful farmer adopted Black Soldier Fly (BSF) Larvae farming alongside his fish ponds.

BSF larvae are a high protein, natural food source that fish love. Unlike houseflies, they are clean, non-pest insects. Research confirms that BSF larvae can replace up to 30% of expensive fishmeal without slowing down the growth of the fish.

How the Numbers Change

By setting up a BSF colony (which can cost between ₦90,000 and ₦380,000 to start, depending on size), the farmer turns organic waste (rotten fruits, cassava peels) into free fish food.

If your feed bill is usually ₦650,000 per cycle:

• Standard Farmer: Pays ₦650,000 cash to feed sellers.
• Smart Farmer: Replaces 30% with BSF. Saves ₦195,000 instantly.

That saving goes directly to your Net Profit.

Efficiency: The Race Against Time

The second adjustment the successful farmer made was to the time cycle.

The average grow out period for catfish is 180 days (6 months). However, through strict water management and sorting (separating big fish from small ones so they don’t fight), it is possible to reach “table size” in 150 days.

Cutting off 30 days saves you a full month of feeding costs and labor. Improving this “technical efficiency” reduces your overheads significantly. Data indicates that efficiency improvements alone can cut production costs by 5 to 7%.

The ₦1 Million Breakdown

Below is a comparison of how the “Smart Farmer” scales to ₦1 Million compared to the “Average Farmer” using a standard 1,500 – 2,000 fish capacity model.

Note: The “Smart Farmer” also benefits from “Increasing Returns to Scale” (1.65), meaning as he expands using his savings, his profit grows faster than his costs.

Steps to Replicate This Success

1. Don’t Start Blind: Calculate your cost per kg before you buy a single fingerling. If it’s above ₦1,200, stop. You need to lower costs first.
2. Start a Maggot/BSF Farm First: Don’t wait until the fish are hungry. Establish your BSF colony 4 weeks before stocking fish.
3. Sort Weekly: The biggest cause of loss is cannibalism (big fish eating small fish). Sorting ensures high survival rates, boosting your total revenue.
4. Target Direct Buyers: The “Average” revenue is based on selling to middlemen. To hit the million naira mark, sell directly to restaurants or consumers at retail prices (currently hovering around ₦3,500/kg in major cities).

The Bucket Patch

Making ₦1 million from catfish is not a lottery; it is an engineering problem. It requires fixing the “leaking bucket” of feed costs. By integrating low cost, local protein like BSF larvae and managing your time strictly, you move from a hobbyist to a profitable agribusiness owner.

However, maybe handling live animals, water pH, and maggots sounds like too much trouble for you. If you prefer a business with less daily maintenance and guaranteed industrial buyers, you might want to look at crop farming instead.

Next Article: Lessons from a Small Maize Farmer Who Supplies Breweries will show you how to trade the stress of livestock for the stability of corporate contracts.

🤷 Didn’t find a story, a grass to grace for one heroic catfish farmer?
🙎…shey you dey whine me?
It is Your story.
Achieving that kind of profit on a small catfish farm might look out of reach. But it’s You who becomes the profitable farmer when you faithfully put this knowledge into practice.