ANALYSIS OF FISH VALUE CHAIN AND POST-HARVEST LOSS: THE CASE OF LAKE HAWASSA, SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA

Fish provides nutrients that are essential to cognitive and physical development, and an important part of healthy diet. However, fish post-harvest loss, resource tragedy, overfishing, low management and traditional fish harvesting practices are discouraging fish market supply and fishers profitability. Therefore, this study was sought to analyze fish value chain and post-harvest loss of Lake Hawassa. The study used cross-sectional data from representative fishers of 166 and key informants. Additionally, data were collected from 10 traders, 5 fisher cooperatives, 4 processors, 5 hotels and 10 consumers. Both descriptive and OLS model were employed to analyze the data. Fish market of Lake Hawassa was characterized as loose oligopoly which reflects that there was concentration of resource and power. According to the result, quality, quantity and market force loss of fish were identified as influential on fish supply and actor’s income. Quantity loss was more significantly affecting fish supply along the value chain. Quantitatively, 6.76, 0.93 and 1.79 kg/day of quantity, quality and market force loss were occurring, respectively. The performance of fish market was computed by using the indicators of marketing margin. Accordingly, the average cost and price of fish per kg were 7.75 and 48.1 birr, respectively. This indicates that the profit was significant to the fishers. The model indicated that market information, household education, fishing experience, owning of cold storage, credit access, fishing site and post-harvest loss affected the fish supply significantly. Accessing market information, household education, credit facility, cold storage, and experience sharing are indispensable for better fish supply