[Killietalk] RE: RE: Wild Collections Proposal (Kray, Edd)

["matt kaufman" <igotadose at hotmail_com>]

Pay someone in Africa somewhere to dig a ditch and raise some fish?

That assumes (I think) that you have a shovel, some land you own and paid 
off whatever scam the gov't pulls for permits. And, how do you get these 
easily raised fish into a bag (that costs money), in a box( money), labeled 
for shipping(need to be able to read and write) and taken to the exporter 
(vehicle transit) for the plane flight (money, export licenses).

Set up an export business? Works great till the government takes it over.

Some years ago at an ACA convention, I chatted with Stuart Grant, the famous 
exporter of cichlids from Lake Malawi. Keeping the local authorities happy 
is a huge part of his job. Providing jobs for the locals and food, too, 
works for him.

He's also got several advantages over a 'killi exporting' operation
               1) A relatively steady supply of fish
               2) The fish sell for enough money for him to live off of and 
run his business
               3) Abundant cheap labor; as I remember he pays substantially 
less than $1/day to his workers, I think at the time he said it was 20 
cents. And that might've been per week
               4) At this point, a well established operation that's very 
organized
               5) A relatively stable government

A good friend recently tried to set up a livebearer exporting business in 
Mexico. He's from Mexico and had rights to some drainage ponds and would 
raise the livebearers and ship to a US distributor. It didn't succeed - for 
one, it's a lot more expensive to ship to the US now, and basically a lot of 
unanticipated hassle plus bad weather did them in. Fortunately, he had 
outside income and resources and wasn't badly undone by the failure. And 
Mexico is much closer than Africa, and easier to ship from.

So lets dispense with the pollyanna ideas of setting up a killi exporting 
business, unless we find a charitable sugar daddy willing to spend the large 
amounts of money in the various attempts at it. It'll take more than 
currently in the AKA coffers, I suspect. Way more.

Matt
PS
Whoever it was that razzed Nevin about Malaria - scr*w you. Nevin's taken 
personal risk to go to Africa and introduced a number of fish into the hobby 
through repeated trips. What have you ever done for the fish hobby? I 
imagine the biggest risk *you'll* ever take for the good of the hobby is a 
car ride to the local Petco.


PPS
Oh yeah; whoever it was that complained about AKA keeping stuff only to its 
members... The forum you're babbling on, is funded entirely by the AKA. 
Barry's list and web site is built on his time with his efforts. You should 
be appreciative of what the AKA is doing for you by running this list for 
nigh onto nine years (Is that right? Or is it 10?) for *free*.

Enough ranting for now.

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