Socio-economic Impact of Community Based Fish Culture on Seasonal Floodplain <i>Beel</i> - A Comparative Study

Abstract

Beel Mail is a 100 ha seasonal floodplain beel where community based fish culture was introduced during rainy season with 73 community members by department of fisheries with the funding support of WorldFish Center in year 2006. Socio-economic impact of this management was compared with control beel Chandpur. Beel Chandpur is 200 ha seasonal floodplain beel where also 16 landowner part time fishermen introduced fish culture during flooding. Beel Mail was stocked with 34.93 kg ha-1 fish fingerlings and beel Chandpur was stocked with 9.68 kg ha-1. Fish was harvested after about 6 months culture period and it was noticed that the gross production was about 4.7 times higher in the project site than the control site. Farmers obtained TK 7481.23 ha-1 as net return based on production cost in beel Mail and TK 3261.90 ha-1 as net return based on production cost in beel Chandpur. Average fish consumption increased by 20.49% in project site. In addition, future stocking and saving fund for fishermen society were established and sharing of benefit from fish culture was more evenly distributed between landowners and landless fishermen in project site than control beel. Keywords: Beel; Landowner; Landless; Community based fisheries management. © 2010 JSR Publications. ISSN: 2070-0237 (Print); 2070-0245 (Online). All rights reserved. DOI: 10.3329/jsr.v2i2.3430 J. Sci. Res. 2 (2), 369-379 (2010)