Production of Fish Varieties in Paddy Fields Simultaneously (The Case Study in Iran)

At present, agriculture systems must be programmed to achieve economic and sustainable crop production. Fish farming in the paddy fields taking the potential facilities available in the paddy fields is straight forward and low-cost. Four species of warm-water fish (common carp, grass carp, silver carp, and bighead) are of production potential in Northern Iran paddy fields. These 4 species of fish interrelated to each other (synergy). Fish farming in paddy fields is a sustainable, low cost activity to produce high value protein and minerals. This kind of combined production optimizes the resource consumption through complementary usage of land and water irrigation. Across the field, integrated rice and fish farming decrease the fertilizer, insecticides and herbicide consumption. On this basis, a positive environmental aspect is that economic loss threshold for pesticides and herbicides consumption increase to the higher levels. Also, higher yield of the rice plant is followed and provides more net interest for the farmer compared to rice monoculture through increase yield of rice and selling the fish.