The Poultry and Livestock sector is an integral part of the farming in Bangladesh and is contributing tremendously towards poverty alleviation, self-employment, nutritional enhancement and agricultural resource development. Less capital and time are required to adopt the program while it generates a substantial return for the households engaged in this sector. Approximately 70% of the landless women are directly or indirectly involved in traditional poultry rearing activities. It is a good source of income for rural women as they have some experience in poultry rearing. Poultry rearing could be more effective if poultry mortality could be reduced with the improvement of local breed. At the same time, nutritional level of the family could be enhanced.

BEES started its poultry and livestock program since its inception and has vast experience in operating this program. In 1997, BEES has been started implementing the program with a revised strategy incorporating some new components and assistance. The major objectives of the poultry and livestock program are to increase income particularly of women, reduce poultry & livestock mortality, improve the variety of poultry birds & upgrade the local breeds of livestock through crossbreeding, fulfill the protein requirement of the rural poor and generate income.

The program is being implemented by BEES with the assistance from the Bangladesh Government and with the own source of BEES. Selected group members are provided with different types of training on poultry and livestock rearing and management. BEES makes vaccination facility available to the beneficiaries through Govt. Livestock and Poultry Department. BEES also arrange credit facilities for the target group members. Apart from these, BEES provides services through its technical staff to the program beneficiaries.

Objectives

To utilize the poultry and livestock potentials fully towards poverty eradication, nutritional enhancement and sustainable agricultural resource development.

Achievement

Under this program BEES provide training to staff as well as beneficiaries. During the reporting period July 2002-June2003, a total of 11 program staff and 1,172 target beneficiaries received training against the target of 14 and 1,300 respectively which implies about 79% and more than 90% achievement respectively. A total of 7 project staff and 880 target beneficiaries received training on “Small Poultry Farm Management” while 4 staff and 292 beneficiaries received training on “Small Cattle Farm Management”.

The training courses for the staff were facilitated by a pool of resource persons from the Dept. of Livestock and Poultry while the courses for beneficiaries level were conducted and facilitated by the trained staff of the program at field level. A total of 1,910 beneficiaries were covered under the program during the reporting period against the target of 2,050 beneficiaries, which signifies more than 93% achievement. Achievements in the area of training with regard to small poultry and small cattle farm management training under the program were quite satisfactory.

In the area of loan disbursement, during the reporting period July 2002-June 2003, more than 17 million taka has been disbursed which was 90% of the annual target. Out of the total disbursed loan, an amount of Tk. 69,30,000 was disbursed to 880 beneficiaries for poultry farming and amounting to Tk. 1,01,70,000 was disbursed to 1,030 beneficiaries for cattle rearing and farming.

Of the total loan amount, 41% was received for poultry farming and 59% was obtained for cattle rearing & farming.

In this regard, the program staff put their earnest efforts to establish poultry farms and arrange high breed cattle for cattle rearing farms. During the reporting session, a total of 2,900 high breed poultry birds and 530 high breed cattle were arranged for the target beneficiaries and BEES supported to establish 58 small poultry farms and 28 small cattle rearing farms. Moreover, a huge number of poultry birds were also collected by the staff from different private sources which have been distributed to the beneficiaries.

During July 2002-June 2003, a total of 65,326 poultry and about 16,000 cattle were vaccinated under the program intervention with assistance from Livestock and Poultry Department of the government. It has definitely a positive impact of the training course on poultry and livestock vaccination at beneficiary level. After receiving the training, the beneficiaries became aware of the need of vaccination and to meet their requirement the program staff had to take serious efforts to collect required quantity of vaccines from the Govt. Dept., which was not readily available at upazila level.

One of the most vital objectives of the poultry and livestock program is to improve the average monthly income of each of the target beneficiaries. Keeping the objective in mind, the program staff concentrated their efforts at all the critical aspects of the program activities. As a result of their sincere efforts, they were able to bring a satisfactory result by increasing the average monthly income up to Tk. 522 from their baseline status of Tk. 356, which indicates that each of the poultry farmers was able to increase her/his average income by Tk. 166 per month. Similarly, those who were engaged in cattle farming, were able to increase their average monthly income up to Tk. 718 from their baseline status of Tk. 554, which indicates that each of the cattle farmers was able to increase her/his average income by Tk. 164 per month.