Measurable returns
A woman producer earns at least ₹50,000 a year from the activity. Today, more than 15,000 women poultry producers organized in 31 producer’s organisations in Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Assam, Maharashtra and Odisha posted revenues of more than INR 625 crores and earned over INR 40 crores profit (FY 2022-23), and these organizations now have total equity base of INR 82.75 crores.
Impact of smallholder poultry
- Income from poultry has reduced the deficit the family faces and has replaced wage earning as a livelihood option.
- With income going into the hands of women, incidences of wife beating have reduced.
- Women producers have become more assertive, which is visible in their interaction with outsiders.
- Women have become health conscious due to an increased awareness of diseases and medication, because of the training they receive on healthcare in poultry training. Further, having cash at hand enables them to take care of medical expenses.
- Migration has significantly reduced. There have been a few cases of producers making investments from their own resources or taking loans for expanding the poultry production infrastructure.
- Poultry activity helps women and their children stay back at home, restoring their family/social life, and most importantly eliminating the disruptive impact on children’s education as a result of migration of children with parents.
- Many producers have expanded their poultry sheds, and have diversified livelihood portfolio by investing in land and livestock etc.
- In many cases, producers have bought assets such as ornaments, cycles, TV, mobile phones, motor cycle etc, and have also taken agricultural land on lease with the poultry income. Many of them have built new homes.
- If community response is an indicator of impact, in these clusters there exists tremendous demand for poultry as a livelihood activity. The positive demonstration by the project has motivated many private entrepreneurs to start broiler farming. Many independent poultry farms have also come up in the area.