October 21, 2017

SMALLHOLDER POULTRY

NSPDT’s smallholder community poultry model enables poor women in rural India to start and run successful poultry enterprises.

The NSPDT model adapts industrial poultry to a small woman farmer in a remote village. It does this by organising women into collectives, creating systems and processes for them to attain industry competitive production and scale efficiencies. The enterprise gives the woman farmer an income for her labour while giving her the dignity and control of an owner.

The model works on three fronts: the organisation of production, access to input-output markets and financial systems. Women from poor families are organised into cooperatives with each woman rearing broilers in modern poultry-farms built in her backyard. A mature cooperative typically has 300-500 members with 25-30 farmers in a village. High quality production services are built around a community-based supervisor, who provides round-the-clock production management and farm-support, and trained veterinarians.

Remuneration is structured to optimise production efficiency and insulate farmers from price fluctuations and supply uncertainties of the market. The cooperative engages a professional manager trained in veterinary or management sciences as its chief functionary responsible for day-to-day management and operational business decisions. A Poultry Management System based on the Quality Assurance Systems approach provides a detailed systems and procedure template for business decisions and helps in compliance and monitoring.

Cooperatives across a state or region form a federation. This enables members to attain economies of scale in procuring inputs, improved compliances and access to professional and technical support, while providing a platform for sharing knowledge and process among member cooperatives and building solidarity. The federation ensures that cooperatives remain competitive, adapting and responding to techno-commercial changes in the industry.