Introduction
Water quality is a crucial factor impacting fish health in aquaculture . Poor water quality limited stocking density, reduced fish growth, and increased mortality, which affect the aquaculture farm's economic performance. Technologies such as biofloc and aeration technologies were developed to improve water quality. However, knowledge of the association between technology and the economic farm performance of aquaculture is limited, especially among smallholder fish farmers. This paper aims to investigate the association between water quality improvement through technology application on the economic performance of Tilapia smallholder fish farmers.
Material and Method
Cross-sectional farm characteristics and economic data were collected in 2025 from 160 fish farmers in Ciamis, Indonesia, using a structured questionnaire. Moreover, production and economic indicators (revenue, costs, and partial gross margin) were calculated per m2 per year. Descriptive statistics showed the difference between farms with and without technology, as assessed by the Mann-Whitney test. Additionally, the association of technology and farm characteristics on economic performance was investigated by a multiple linear regression model using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) (Wooldridge et al., 2009).
Result and Discussion
The general farm characteristics resulted from 160 farmers participating in this study, consisting of 88% no-adopters, 9% paddle wheel adopters, and 3% biofloc adopters. Based on descriptive statistics, water quality technology might be associated with higher production and revenue. Increasing water quality leads to increasing fish health, which causes farmers to be more confident in increasing stocking density. Moreover, the higher stocking density achieved through technology application led to higher costs for fingerlings, feed, and electricity. In addition, the greater distribution of fish production among fish farmers using biofloc, compared to those using aeration technologies, might reflect huge differences in proficiency with biofloc technology among farmers. Multiple regression results showed that technology was not associated with the partial gross margin. The reason could be that relatively few farms adopted technologies. The other reason might be that increased production was not sufficient to cover rising production costs caused by the application of technology. Improving institutional support in terms of information, capacity building, and technical support was essential to enhance the adoption and effectiveness of water quality technology applications.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to express their gratitude to LPDP for the research funding, the smallholder fish farmers who participated in the survey, the Smart Indonesian Agriculture (Smart-In-Ag) project at WUR, the fisheries and aquaculture extension workers, and Dinas Peternakan dan Perikanan, Kabupaten Ciamis, for their support in the data collection process.
References
Akhter, F., Siddiquei, H. R., Alahi, E. E., Mukhopadhyay, S. C., Alahi, M. E. E. ;, & Mukhopadhyay, S. C. (2021). Recent Advancement of the Sensors for Monitoring the Water Quality Parameters in Smart Fisheries Farming. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers
Wooldridge, J. M., Brazil, A., Japan, Korea, & Mexico. (2009). Introductory Econometrics A Modern Approach. www.ichapters.com