Introduction to Biofloc Farming
Biofloc Fish Farming, or BFT is a relatively newer concept in India and is driving many first-time agripreneurs to explore the world of pisciculture. Consequently, the demand for training options and courses within the Biofloc Fish Farming domain is increasing by the minute. However, BFT is a space intensive vocation and requires access to the actual fish farm to understand the operations and the technology behind it. However, this can also mean that not everyone can get access to the training, as the number of BFT fish farms is not only limited, but not all these farms offer training.
This drives us to the next best option – online courses! We know what you’re thinking; how can something so hands-on be taught through a screen? And we understand your concerns, which is why we have picked up a case study and we will dissect every element of learning such a skill online using this company’s course on BFT.
First, let’s understand what Biofloc fish farming really means. Biofloc fish farming leverages the BFT or Biofloc Technology to farm fish in tanks under a carefully controlled environment. The fact that the environment is regularly monitored enhances the yield quality and quantity, ultimately increasing the profitability and sustainability of the fish farming business.
A 2 square metre tank can hold up to 3000 fish, which is a superb cost-to-benefit metric, making BFT fish farming a favorite among new agripreneurs and fish farmers. It also uses a mechanism where the fish excretes are converted into nutritious feed, making the whole feeding mechanism cyclical, sustainable and versatile, as it also helps towards easing waste management within the tanks.
Let us see how Rocket Skills, a Gurgaon (Delhi-NCR) based edu-tech platform focused on upskilling Indians in the MSME space is making agriculture more accessible to people who have absolutely no background in farming, animal husbandry and allied industries. At present, Rocket Skills offers around a dozen online courses in the agri-business space, including mushroom farming business, organic farming business, bee-keeping, dairy farming and whatnot.
One of these courses is the Biofloc Fish Farming course which, much like the others, is a combination of video-on-demand pedagogy (wherein you get most of the content in the form of pre-recorded lectures which you can view as per your comfort and time allowance, and you get to keep these videos for the lifetime), live webinars with the instructors (to cover specific, dynamic topics which have the potential to keep changing over time), Question and Answer sessions with the instructors regularly over video conferencing, and a learning mobile app, which connects everything together into a more cohesive and logically flowing course.
This means that the content is comprehensive, and accounts for all the changing trends, be it information around subsidies and how to avail the same, or even the general market backdrop and trade potential in different parts of the country and the world. Further, students get ample opportunity to connect with experts and ask them questions that may be very specific to their location, geography, farm, or even their budget.
Given that the courses are completely online, Rocket Skills has taken many steps to make it as interactive as the experience can be, and yet keep it accessible to the masses by keeping the courses extremely affordable. The webinars are open to the masses who have not signed up for the course, and some of these webinars are absolutely free – so if you want to understand a little about your instructor before you commit to the courses, attending these webinars could be a great patch test.
These courses also offer an industry-recognized certificate of completion and access to a whole learning community where you can make meaningful peer-to-peer and peer-to-expert relationships and even explore the possibilities of working with each other or sharing resources – sounds like a great deal to us!
Besides learning from a structured source like the biofloc technology Aquaculture course from Rocket Skills, you can also explore blogs, quick reference guides, and other free resources like videos on platforms like YouTube to learn about the basics. However, it is unlikely for unorganized sources of information to make logical sense to a novice, and since there is so much information that is readily available if becomes an even bigger challenge to skim the relevant information out of the big data dump that is available online.
With targeted advertising and the growing use of data analytics in optimizing your browsing experience, you’re more likely to click the link to a resource (such as a blog) that has captured your browsing patterns, rather than your true need. This makes the whole information hunting process challenging, as you can never be sure as to the quality of accuracy and richness of information.
This leads us to conclude that for people who do not have access to an on-farm training opportunity in their vicinity or are not willing to spend a huge sum of money due to either financial constraints or doubts around whether Biofloc Technology is for them or not, online courses such as the one offered by Rocket Skills look like the sanest and safest bet. Given all the inclusions, ranging from community access to video-on-demand, interaction with experts to the peer-to-peer network, the online courses by Rocket Skills check a lot of boxes and thereby, become our recommendation to anyone looking to explore the world of agri-business and agripreneurship.
