Sustainable smallholder poultry interventions to promote food security and social, agricultural, and ecological resilience in the Luangwa Valley, Zambia

Abstract

In Zambia's Luangwa Valley, highly variable rainfall and lack of education, agricultural inputs, and market access constrain agricultural productivity, trapping smallholder farmers in chronic poverty and food insecurity. Human and animal disease (e.g. HIV and Newcastle Disease, respectively), further threaten the resilience of poor families. To cope with various shocks and stressors, many farmers employ short-term coping strategies that threaten ecosystem resilience. Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) utilizes an agribusiness model to alleviate poverty and food insecurity through conservation farming, market development and value-added food production. COMACO promotes household, agricultural and ecological resilience along two strategic lines: improving recovery from shocks (mitigation) and reducing the risk of shock occurrence. Here we focus on two of COMACO's poultry interventions and present data showing that addressing health and management constraints within the existing village poultry system resulted in significantly improved productivity and profitability. However, once reliable productivity was achieved, farmers preferred to sell chickens rather than eat either the birds or their eggs. Sales of live birds were largely outside the community to avoid price suppression; in contrast, the sale of eggs from community-operated, semi-intensive egg production facilities was invariably within the communities. These facilities resulted in significant increases in both producer income and community consumption of eggs. This intervention therefore has the potential to improve not only producers’ economic resilience, but also resilience tied to the food security and physical health of the entire community.

The potential of a simple egg to improve maternal and child nutrition

“…Cost was the primary limitation to routine egg consumption in rural Zambia (Hong, Martey, Dumas, & Travis, ). Prior to an intervention that increased flock size and eggs production, households in rural Zambia sold eggs or chickens rather than for consumption (Dumas et al, ). A recent analysis showed that eggs are a very expensive source of calories in low‐income countries with caloric prices of these foods very strongly associated with consumption patterns among young children (Headey & Hirvonen, ).…”

Small‐scale egg production centres increase children's egg consumption in rural Zambia

“…Third—perhaps most importantly—as a means of offsetting high flock mortality, smallholders have repeatedly demonstrated a preference for allowing eggs from village chickens to hatch rather than consuming them at home (de Bruyn et al, ; Dumas et al, ; Dumas et al, ; Gueye, ; Olney et al, ). The multipurpose utility of poultry (as a source of food, income, and resilience in the face of shocks) requires a daily cost–benefit analysis on the part of the smallholder, who must weight the many demands of their household in the face of limited resources (Pell & Kristjanson, ).…”

“…The design of the EPC was adapted from a previous, smaller pilot project in the area (Dumas et al, ). Each of the EPCs was stocked with 40 layer hens—considered to be a manageable number of hens for first‐time egg producers, that would fit within a reasonably small facility, and yet would produce a reasonable number of eggs for the local markets—and egg production began in September 2015.…”

“…In rural Zambia, a package of interventions that effectively increased flock sizes had no effect on chicken or egg consumption. Instead, smallholders demonstrated a strong preference for leaving eggs from village chickens to hatch, increasing flock sizes, and allowing them to more readily sell birds as needed (Dumas et al, ). This phenomenon has been reported elsewhere (de Bruyn et al, ; Dumas et al, ; Gueye, ; Olney, Vicheka, Kro, & Chakriya, ) and is a major limitation to the use of village poultry as a tool for increasing egg availability and consumption.…”

Family poultry: Multiple roles, systems, challenges, and options for sustainable contributions to household nutrition security through a planetary health lens

“…Markets also serve as a common source of ND infection, sometimes through the random sale of infected birds during outbreaks to salvage those not yet showing clinical signs (Ahlers et al, ). Models for the sustainable control of ND under resource‐limiting conditions through the training of community vaccinators who work on a fee‐for‐service basis have proved sustainable in Sub‐Saharan Africa since the early 2000s (Alders et al, ; Alders, Bagnol, & Young, ; Alexander et al, ; Dumas et al, ; Table ). Vaccination of family poultry has received little attention from animal health services in Sub‐Saharan Africa with most funding from national governments and donors continuing to focus on ruminants.…”