Tanzania: Butterfly Business Spins Money

[burahadeer]

Tanzania Daily News (Dar es Salaam)

 

 

Tanzania: Butterfly Business Spins Money

By Orton Kiishwenko

 

 

 

 

TANZANIA has embarked on enrolling more farmers to a butterfly breeding programme to increase export of the product to foreign markets. The locally bred butterflies are exported to the UK, US, Germany and France.

 

This move has sparked an unprecedented interest by small scale farmers in parts of the country especially along Tanga coastal areas, Lushoto District, Kilimanjaro and Njombe regions. Officials say farmers are earning over 600,000/- per individual's harvest in an average of two months.

 

"That is good money for farmers in such a period, we hope these can improve their income levels," the Chief Conservator of Kilimanjaro's Chome Natural Reserve, Mr Frank Mahenge, told the 'Daily News on Saturday.'

 

Giving an example, the official noted that if 100 farmers in a particular village got involved, they were likely to collectively reap a total of 50m/- if nothing of the products was damaged during transportation to outside markets.

 

He said farming butterflies was currently putting food on the table for hundreds of households in villages in three regions. "The butterfly business is booming, " he said, noting that a farmer needs only two butterflies to get a thousand pupae and that will be over 600,000/- because that is what a farmer can receive after every harvest in only two months and that is muchearn from the chicken or egg selling business."

 

Mr Mahenge explained that people want to buy as many butterfly species as possible for their collections and to make nice decorations. "Butterflies are also bought for research," he said, adding that the insects are excellent indicators of the ecological condition of most terrestrial habitats.

 

"Butterfly specimens here are very beautiful. Big hotels and tourists come to buy them. Rich businessmen are beginning to buy them too for beauty in the house at occasions like weddings and for education of their children," he said, noting that most of them were collected from farmers every harvest.

 

A wildlife officer at Same District Council, Mr Thomas Katunzi said that the butterflies sold to Europe are kept for exhibits, research and decorations. Huseein Mwanyoka, a butterfly farmer told the 'Daily News on Saturday' that some designers from Europe use the butterflies to come up with pattern designs.

 

"With this business you don't need a big farm; you don't need a big room. Anyone can take up this business because you only need a small container," he said. According to Mr Mahenge, the process involves construction of a small, netted enclosure with food plants for the target species of butterfly. A female butterfly is caught and placed in the breeding cage to lay her eggs on the leaves.

 

The eggs are harvested and tended until they make the transformation from larva to pupa to butterfly - a process that takes about a month. He said that ideally , a farmer could be obliged to have a licence granted by Wildlife Services to trade butterfly pupae and other live insects in Kenya and the rest of Africa, but noted that they had put in place an agency ,Tanzania Forest Conservation Group, to collect butterflies from farmers after harvest for export.

 

For months, villagers who live near Amani Natural Reserve and Chome Natural Reserve forest have found this unusual source of income, he said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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