**3.1 Infrastructural facilities criteria map for prawn farming**

The infrastructural facilities aspects of the study comprised of distance to road, distance to market, distance to electricity, distance to fry source, or hatchery layers which were overlay in the GIS environment to generate the overall infrastructure facilities map (**Figure 1**).

Prawn farming operations were affected by infrastructural factors [18]. One of the requirements for successful prawn farming is a good road network. Foods and other necessary equipment are transported to the farm and market. Therefore, prawn farms should be close to the road for easy and quick access. The distance to road suitability classification showed that 90.5% of Negeri Sembilan was close to access roads within less than 2 km. Road accessibility was limited in the hilly and dense forested area where roads construction was difficult.

Electricity is a vital factor in determining the success of prawn farming due to the power supply to power the farm's machines for prawn production [19]. Any area lying within less than 3 km to the main electric power supply line are considered the most suitable site for prawn farming. Major roads and cities coincided with areas with good electricity supply in the study area. The area between 7 and 12 km was considered moderately suitable. In this study, more than half of the area have electricity distribution within the suitable range. The not suitable area falls within areas greater than 12 km away from the main source of electric power line occupying 0.4% of the study area at the extreme north of the study area.

**Figure 1.** *The infrastructure facilities criteria suitability map for prawn farming in Negeri Sembilan,*


**4. Conclusion**

influence on prawn farming.

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90659*

**Author details**

**99**

Benjamin Ezekiel Bwadi<sup>1</sup>

The study integrates the GIS and AHP methods to evaluate the infrastructure facility of an area and its suitability for prawn farming. The approaches were able to identify areas with appropriate infrastructures for the sustainable development of prawn farming in Negeri Sembilan. The factor layers considered included distance to road, distance to market, distance to electricity, and distance to fry source. From the result of the analysis, infrastructure facilities have been identified as major factors that have great influence on prawn farming. This confirms the study by Hossain and Das [1] who identified transportation facilities, electricity, market, and availability of hatcheries as some infrastructure facilities having significant

*Site Suitability Analysis of Infrastructure Facilities for Giant Freshwater Prawn Farming*

The infrastructure facilities suitability map generated will be useful to farmers, stakeholders, policy-makers and decision-makers to improve the efficiency of land use by selecting which site is appropriate to farm prawn. They will lead to increased yield and the optimal utilisation of the available land resources. This can reduce the overall cost of production and conflicts among land users. Infrastructural facility developments in the area such as establishment of hatcheries, rural road construction, and electric power supply to facilitate prawn farming are recommended.

\* and Firuza Begham Mustafa<sup>2</sup>

\*Address all correspondence to: bwadiben@gmail.com and firuza@um.edu.my

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

1 Department of Geography, Taraba State University, Jalingo, Nigeria

2 Department of Geography, University of Malaya, Malaysia

provided the original work is properly cited.

\*

#### **Table 3.**

*Infrastructure criteria suitable area for prawn farming.*

Demand for prawn is very important. Hence, prawn farm should be sited where there is high demand for the product. Quality of prawn deteriorates with time after harvest, and so it requires a prompt and ready market. Therefore, the proximity of farm to the market is very important.

Source of fries to the farm is also very important to the establishment of the farm. Fry mortality increases with long-distance travel as they are susceptible to bad environmental condition; therefore, it is advisable that hatcheries be located nearer the farm. It was discovered from the study that most hatcheries as sources of fries were located some kilometres far away from the study area such as Perak and Kedah where the farmers must travel to purchase fries which takes about 3–4 h to reach and another 3–4 h to come back, which was considered not appropriate for prawn farming. This increases the mortality rate of the fries (juvenile) and cost of production in terms of transportation. According to New [20], prawn farms should be located close to a hatchery because the mortality of the fry increases with longdistance travel to obtain it. From the study, it was found that only a few hatcheries were established in the study area.

The southwestern area of Negeri Sembilan is better equipped in terms of the infrastructural facilities. The most suitable area was basically regions along the major roads linking Negeri Sembilan and Selangor state as one move to the Kuala Lumpur, Seremban the state capital region, and the major towns. Electrification exists almost beside the roads which are significant to prawn farming. The unsuitable areas are in the northern parts with pockets of most suitable around Jelebu. The infrastructure facilities result shown in **Table 3** indicates that 75% (496,198.75 ha) of the area for prawn farming are most suitable, 16% (105,414.82 ha) as moderately suitable, and 10% (63,733.73 ha) as not suitable. This confirmed the study conducted by Olaniyi et al. [21] that good infrastructure determines the productivity of prawn of an area.

The market potential was based on the distance of the farm to the settlements and the population density of an area. The Negeri Sembilan region was largely good in terms of market potential due to the population density of 159 persons per km<sup>2</sup> with high demand for prawn in the region. Seremban District with the highest population density of 586 persons per km<sup>2</sup> was the most suitable market potential, Port Dickson with 191 persons per km<sup>2</sup> , Tampin with 99 persons per km<sup>2</sup> , Jempol District with 79 persons per km<sup>2</sup> , Kuala Pilah with 64 persons per km<sup>2</sup> , and Jelebu with 29 persons per km<sup>2</sup> [22]. The relative location of the area near Kuala Lumpur, the Federal capital territory, also provides the area with good market potential as prawns were sold to the restaurant for local consumption. The farms were located relatively near the market areas. The Seremban District with the population of about 555,935 (2012 census) with the land area 397,185 km and Port Dickson provide the most suitable area [22]. The rest of the districts were moderately suitable with pockets of the most suitable area. The extreme north of Jelebu District with less population was considered not suitable for a market potential.

*Site Suitability Analysis of Infrastructure Facilities for Giant Freshwater Prawn Farming DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90659*
