Govt plans poverty reduction through livestock development

[Naveed Yaseen]

By Ijaz Kakakhel

ISLAMABAD: To bring social and economic transformation of rural Pakistan by empowering millions of small livestock holders, the government has initiated ‘poverty reduction through small holders livestock and daily development’.

The scheme would cost the government Rs 3.539 billion, with PSDP contribution Rs 2.692 billion, bank loan Rs 374.4 million and community shares Rs 472.459 million. The livestock sector strategy was to increase productivity of livestock, poultry and fisheries for achieving self-reliance to promote production of high value products, quality milk and dairy products. The production and export potential of livestock / livestock produce would be exploited in compliance with WTO requirements.

Officials said that more than 90 percent of livestock is owned by small farmers and landless rural households. The smallholders, particularly, the landless livestock holders are heavily dependent on revenue from sale of milk and animals to meet their day-to-day household expenditures. In the mixed farming system, livestock was also the main source of cash income for the rural household as well as a source of productive employment for the poor and women.

The officials claimed that the project would establish scientifically designed 400 smallholders’ livestock farms. The project implementation would be steered / administered by the Planning Commission during first year of the project. Subsequently, it would be handed over to the Ministry of Livestock and Dairy Development (MLDD) and Livestock and Dairy Development Board (LDDB) for implementation in close coordination with provincial livestock department.

The project would establish smallholders farms based on livestock population of the provinces. Duly registered Community Organizations would mange the farms. The farm would comprise 100 to 150 animals having facilities for feeding animals, fresh water, recycling of organic wastes to produce biogas / compost / electricity and veterinary services. The government would provide a grant up to 80 percent for infrastructure development. Milk would be collected and processed by community owned processing units. The milk would be transported through milk tanks purchased by the commun ity or any community representative who would play 10 percent equity while 20 percent would be paid as project grant and 70 percent loan would be arranged at reasonable mark-up.

The project proposes to establish a Project Management Unit (PMU) at federal level and 3 Provincial Project Management Units (PPMUs) one each for Punjab / AJK, Sindh / Balochistan and for NWFP / NAs. The project has four components, which are:

Component-1: It would comprise social mobilization and grouping of livestock holders into formal associations. Activities include provision of simple cost effective infrastructure for community farms, technical advice for improved management, health / hygiene and nutrition, input supply like vaccinations, provision of agri credit ad aggregation of milk supply in a chiller and marketing at competitive prices.

Component-2: Collection and marketing of raw mild collectively on competitive basis, installation of chilling / processing units and mild collection from community farms and transportation to processing units established by dairy associations for processing / marketing.

Component-3: Capacity building / gender training in animal management, nutrition, breeding and preventive vaccination against common animal diseases, training of community youth in vet, first aid and others.

Component-4: Establishment of biogas plant at each farm and educating the farmers in effective use of compost management as organic fertilizer.

The government has allocated Rs 400 million under PSDP-2009-10 and the Executive Committee of National Economic Council (ECNEC) approved it. The scheme would complete in 2012.

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