Limits of Tilapia Aquaculture for Rural Livelihoods in Solomon Islands
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Increasing pressure on coastal fisheries poses serious threats to local livelihoods and the food security of Pacific Islanders. In response, governments and development agencies have explored tilapia pond aquaculture as an alternative fish production source. Yet, evidence to date on the impact of tilapia aquaculture on rural livelihoods has been inconclusive. Drawing on the sustainable livelihood framework, we analysed the contribution of Mozambique tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus) aquaculture to the livelihood assets and outcomes of 40 rural farmers in Solomon Islands. First, results showed that 53% of tilapia farmers were satisfied with tilapia aquaculture’s contribution to their human and social assets, while only 28% and 13% were satisfied with its contribution to their physical and financial assets, respectively. Tilapia aquaculture’s contribution to farmers’ natural assets was also limited. Second, and most importantly, there was an insignificant contribution of tilapia aquaculture to food and income security. Our results demonstrate that tilapia farmers rarely consumed tilapia, with only two of the 40 households having consumed tilapia in the seven days prior the interview. Moreover, only eight tilapia farmers sold their tilapia, which contributed 0.002–0.5% of their total weekly revenue. We argue the limited contribution of tilapia aquaculture to food and income stems from the low productivity of the available tilapia species and the low local demand for tilapia at rural markets. Given the current context of declining coastal fisheries and food insecurity concerns in rural Pacific Islands, it is unlikely that the current form of Mozambique tilapia aquaculture will be able to achieve its objective of addressing food and income security as a complement to coastal fisheries.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".