Dear participants,

This is Datta Rangnekar from Ahmadabad, India.

My compliments to the organizers of this E-conf. as it gives me a good
opportunity to express my views based on ‘perceptions developed through
interactions, observations and learning’ while working/ interacting with
underprivileged and not so underprivileged families in different parts of
India (may be relevant to South Asia to some extent).

I would like to express observations first on point *2 ‘the development for
livelihoods through family poultry — cost and opportunities’ *since I feel
it provides desired backdrop for discussions on other aspects of the E-Conf.




·          ‘Socio-economic importance of family poultry’ needs no emphasis
since the ‘traditional backyard family poultry’ (the predecessor of the
modern family poultry) is an integral part of livelihood systems of many a
social groups of underprivileged families. I realized the strong linkage
and importance observing how quickly the families re-stock the birds after
these get wiped out due to calamities like floods, earthquake or disease
epidemic (I always wished I could study the process for better
understanding).  Social factors have a strong bearing on choice of
sub-systems and hence family poultry production is more common in rural
areas of India with certain social and religious groups.

The current approach to development of family poultry does contribute in a
small way to ‘Nutritional Security’ (I prefer to use that term rather than
food security). The contribution is small since the ‘push is for sale of
produce’ in the development schemes. In states where large commercial
poultry farms have not come up the contribution of traditional and modern
family poultry to poultry production is around 50%.

·           However, the current approach to development of family poultry
is ‘killing poultry genetic resources’ rather than conserving. The
‘development schemes for family poultry’ provide substantial assistance in
form of supply of chicks of new varieties (synthetics or hybrids) developed
by Govt. of private units at heavily subsidized rate but there is no
support for developing traditional family poultry based on indigenous birds
– except for one or two well recognized breeds like Kadaknath from central
India.



·          The traditional family poultry is one of the most sustainable
production systems with hardly any dependence on external sources
(including chicks). One of the salient features of the system is that it is
one of the few that is *‘producer centered’* in the sense that the *‘producer
does not have to approach retailer or consumer for sale but they approach
the producer’.* While the producer may get lower price for the products but
consider saving in drudgery / hassle/ time/energy spent on selling the
product and that is used for other livelihood activities (that is how the
rural families allocate the limited resource of time and energy).



·          A look at the prevailing rural livelihood systems would clearly
reveal that these are made up of a combination of a number of sub-systems
and hence we should not even think of ‘Poultry alone having the capacity of
improving livelihoods’ drop this kind of ‘reductionist approach’. The
underprivileged / resource poor rural families never depend on one
sub-system – it is one of the ‘risk aversion mechanisms’.

 ·          Organizations involved in rural livelihood development and have
understood the systems, would and should not plan for developing only one
sub-system but take a ‘holistic approach’. However, some subsystems may be
given higher priority compared to others depending on the situation and
social factors (there is variation between and within a region).

·          Regarding the choice between genetic resources, feed, and animal
health for highest degree of improvement, at a lower cost – the answer is
on the same lines as above – ‘it is not possible to achieve high degree of
improvement with a single intervention. I cannot refrain from mentioning
that this kind of ‘reductionist approach’ is commonly seen in most of the
Govt. development programmes and the results were not encouraging –
breeding intervention somehow was the most common/popular choice and
‘breeding became synonymous with development and it is high time we depart
from this approach/thinking.

 ·          Family poultry development cannot be identified as easier than
development of other livestock species.

·          Family poultry production is ‘low external input system’ and
hence less likely to be effected by crunch on resources.

·          Meat and eggs – both have equal importance for livelihood.

·          It is the ‘rapport and credibility of the development
organizations’ that would determine degree of risks that producers will
take knowingly.

 Best wishes.

Datta Rangnekar

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