In Bangladesh 60 % of the farmers have less than 0.8 ha farm size which also limits space for taking up additional and diversified farming activities. Integrated fish farming on the other hand offers opportunity for taking up diversified farming activities with optimum utilization of available land space for food production, thus increasing household income of small farmers.
Currently, the farmers mainly practice mixed farming system, where crop/fishery/ livestock sub-systems are independent of each other.
Fish-livestock production in combination with planted crops on pond dykes could be a workable pattern of an integrated system.
The inter-linking is easy: the farm animal produce organic manure for fertilization of agricultural land and fish pond - the crops and plants provide food for animals, fish and man - the nutrient rich pond humus can provide fertilizer to the crop land.
In Bangladesh, the possibilities exist for integrated fish culture with livestock production. There are about 47–48 million cattle, buffaloes, sheep, goats and more than 90 million chickens and ducks in the country. Most of the excreta of these animals is not properly utilized and become wastes which may cause environmental pollution to some extent. If these livestock wastes could be applied in fish ponds through integrated fish farming system, fish production could be increased substantially (in optimal case 4–5t/ha/yr) without using any other fertilizer or supplementary feed for fish.