Seawater-farmed tilapia: Part 2
It is no secret that food-insecure households in South Africa are finding it increasingly difficult to include animal protein in their daily diets, not least because of the COVID-19 pandemic and rising food prices.
From approximately 2005/06, broiler chickens began beating marine-capture fish to become the cheapest animal protein source in the country (tinned pilchards are excluded from this comparison). This is despite the 50% to 100% price spread between the large-scale producer costs at the base of the broiler chicken value chain and supermarket retail prices for frozen dressed birds hovering between R45/g and R55/kg.
At the same time, there appears to be opportunities for small-and medium-scale broiler producers, despite higher feed, abattoir and other input costs, to retail directly to consumers, bypassing the formal value chain.
