The Resilience Strategies of Smallholders’ Poultry Actors

Abstract

Smallholder poultry actors play key roles in increasing food security and contribute significantly to the economy of both developed and developing countries. Despite their roles, they are a vulnerable group and mostly neglected by developmental programmes. As well, they account for most of the world’s poor and hungry. Nevertheless, they continually strive to keep their activities directly as livelihood and indirectly as contributors to the society. They are challenged with; high cost of investment compare to slim margin on returns per unit, poor infrastructure; bad road network and public power supply, poor linkages to information, inputs, market, funding facilities and logistics for both input and output delivery, etc. Diversification into value addition, direct marketing of products using trust factors, investment in alternative power generation through cooperative society and community efforts in rural road development are observable resilience strategies used by these actors.

1. Introduction

Poultry is an important subsector in the livestock sector of agriculture industry of any economy. It is significant in the aggregate economies of rural, peri-urban and urban livelihoods by contributing directly and indirectly to income and employment generations of all the actors along the value chain. Poultry in developing nations like Nigeria is a rare success story in the commercialization of Agriculture [1]. It is characterized by relative faster growth in consumption and trade volume than many other agricultural livestock sector, which include; chickens (local chickens, broilers, and layers), turkeys, geese, ducks, guinea fowls and pigeons [2]. Poultry is most advanced component of animal agriculture compared to other agricultural subsectors that are predominant with subsistence, low scale production capacity due to rudimentary engagements and the inability of actors to integrate science and technology into production.

Smallholder poultry is characterized with small units/capacity, investment outlay and income. Generally, its productivity is low and compounded by a lack of understanding of the interactions of interdependent enterprises [3] along the value chains as well as other adjoining commodities. The study of [4] exposed lack of participation in commercial markets of smallholder poultry productivity as a major constraint, due to high transaction costs, shortage of quality labour, poor liquidity (low cash income) and limited access to credit and saving facilities, dearth of information and weak growth linkages. Also, the study of [5] affirmed the work of [6] that opined that lack of access to technologies and information, poor infrastructure and lack of access to markets and environmental factors were the key limiting factors to sustainable smallholder livestock operations. All these identified constraints are evidence in the day-to-day smallholders’ poultry activities in developing nations.

However, smallholders’ poultry actors have continually engage in their operations directly as livelihood and or indirectly as support to nutrient of households, gift to family and friends during festivals and major traditional rights, hence contributing to socio-economic needs of the society. One way, it can be infer that, this is an informal reasons or resilient strategy that these actors deployed to remain in smallholders’ poultry activities despite the identified constraints to their productivity. Though, several developmental programmes and projects, nationally and internationally, such as the Poultry value chain of Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) of Nigeria Federal Government, Smallholder’s poultry care and business development in South-west by Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicines (GALVmed), African Chicken Genetics Gains (ACGG-NG) project in Nigeria implemented by International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Poultry value chain project by Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND), etc., have been put forward to harness the potentials of rural households and smallholder poultry value chains, and also, help them to develop and implement coping mechanism in their operations.

2. The smallholder poultry actors

Conceptually, actors in any commodity value chains are people who actively engage in the processes of the commodities value chain. They are stakeholders who trade in a specific good; poultry in this context, they however, progresses up the value chain. It includes input, production (traditionally referred to as farming), processing, trading, and end users, which are often refer to as customers. Actors are the providers of activities or operations along the value chain. They can either be an individual or corporate organization. Figure 1 shows a typical model of smallholder poultry value chain.

Figure 1.

Model of smallholders’ poultry value chain.

Along the chain, there are major value chain providers as well as subsidiary providers. For instance, a poultry input provider have, Seed (Day-old chicks, brood and sale, pullet, point of lay, etc.) suppliers, Feed (commercial feed, toll-miller, etc.) supplier and Equipment (simple poultry housing, medicament and veterinary, etc.) dealers. The production in the value chain is strictly performed by the smallholders’ farmers, who transform raw inputs into primary products like broiler (meat poultry) and layers (egg poultry). Beyond these primary products, there are various secondary products from poultry which the smallholders’ poultry actors have been indirectly performed as supplementary livelihood through women and youth. Hence, another resilience strategy deployed to remain in poultry business. The value addition is occupied by processors who transform live broiler into freshly-processed and smoked chicken. Also, aggregate and transform the fecal or droppings of birds into organic manual, as well, the ovals, feathers and blood into livestock feed ingredient as protein source in the diet of livestock. Within the value addition and along other values in the chain is an important and significant logistic provider, who provides the services of transportation of input and output from one actor to another along the chain and to other commodity value chains, like vegetables, annual crops, etc. Sufficiently, this role is downplayed in the day-to-day business interaction of smallholders. It often caused damages to products due to bottleneck and high transactional cost that this service generates in developing nation. However, there have been strategy in area of cluster development and contract orientation between big companies and clusters of smallholders’ poultry farmers to reduce the problem caused by logistic.

The local and international markets in the chain are knitted into distributors and consumers as twin-actors in Smallholders’ poultry value chain. They are essential in providing the socio-economic outlooks for smallholders’ poultry products. Distributors are those that showcase or those that give visibility to products. Hence, they enhance the economic index of all the other actors along the chain. They are creator and mobilizer of wealth. They link one actor to the other. They help communicate either good or bad of products along the chain. The distributor is often regarded to as aggregator and operates in stages or channels depending on the capacity of operators. Products distribution can be direct or indirect. Direct distribution involves just two players in the channel, that is, the producer and the consumers while, indirect distribution involves intermediaries (wholesaler, aggregator or retailers) before the products get to the final users. Smallholders’ poultry farmers uses traditional market system of distribution which is also known as direct distribution channel to exchange their products for money with consumers. Consequently, distributor operates as business entity as sole-proprietor, partnership and or corporation. Their distribution space or market place can either be virtual or physical depending on choice of the users of the products. Consumer on the other hand is the user of smallholders’ poultry products. They are the one that uses the products primarily as food and or as feed ingredients for livestock development. The aim of consumers is to derive optimal satisfaction from the products they purchase for themselves as well as for other auxiliary uses.

By and large, smallholder poultry has its root from rural poultry. The main actor, that is, the farmer can assume multi-dimensional roles as an entity. Besides poultry farming, he can acts as processor, marketer, transporter, and input provider, as well as consumer of the products (egg or meat). Smallholder poultry thus, contribute greatly to the livelihood of many resource-poor farmers and build household’s asset [7]. It makes up about 80 percent of poultry population [8, 9] in low-income food-deficit countries and significantly contributes to; improving human nutrition, providing food (eggs and meat) with high quality nutrients and micronutrients; generating household income [7, 10] and savings, especially for women, thus enhancing the capacity to cope with shocks and reducing economic vulnerability [10]; providing manure for vegetable garden and crop production. As well as serving the socio-cultural and religious functions [7]. Notably, smallholder poultry actors are important stakeholders in increasing food security and significant contributors to the economy of both developed and developing countries. Despite, they are a vulnerable group often neglected by development policy and they account for most of the world’s poor and hungry [10].

3. The resilient strategies deployed by smallholder’ poultry actors

3.1 The concept of resilient strategies

Resilience is the ability or capacity to recover quickly from difficulties or toughness [5]. The day-to-day activities of smallholders’ poultry have some embedded risk factors within its system. These risks are operational as well as managerial inclined. Research and development have provided series of information on how to mitigate the operational challenges with the recent effort on climate change adaptability in livestock system. Also, there have been few managerial information on poultry productivity in which marketing system is key. The concept of cluster and cooperative development are mitigating strategies to market of smallholder poultry value chain. Thus, most operators within this sector have been adopting this market innovation.

In spite of these background, there are several interaction of complex concepts relating to challenges within smallholder poultry system. Thus, a single approach cannot be sufficient to unravel resilient strategies necessary for productivity of the sector. Hence, three theories were exposed by [5], which are socio-ecological system (SES) framework [11], the resilience theory [12] and technology affordances [13]. The SES framework suggests that a smallholder poultry system is made up of primary and secondary attributes. These attributes interact to produce specific outcomes [5]. Consequently, these attributes and interactions within the sectors are key determinants of the challenges faced by the actors and subsequently coping strategies they deployed. The work of [12] opined that applying the resilience theory helps to understand “individual variations in response to risk”. Thus, resilience theory provided the understanding for smallholder poultry system actors to identify their system using SES framework, react to challenges and respond accordingly. Conclusively, availability and affordance of technologies [13] needed to support productivity is key to sustainability of smallholder poultry actors. Hence, access to technologies and information, infrastructure, environmental and markets knowledge are strong indicators to sustainable smallholder poultry value chain [5].

Resilience can provide a philosophical and methodological basis to address systemic risk [9] in a more useful way than traditional approaches based on risk management. Risk assessment and management are used to harden components of the systems affected by specific threats, yet such approaches are often prohibitively expensive to implement, and do not address cascading effects of system failure. Resilience approaches emphasize the characteristics and capabilities that allow a system to recover from and adapt to disruption. Therefore, resilience as the ability of a system to perform four functions with respect to adverse events: 1. planning and preparation; 2. absorption; 3. recovery; and 4. adaptation [9]. On the other hand, smallholder actors often lack the understanding of risk definition, which increases their susceptibility to all forms of risk [5, 14].

3.2 The challenges and resilient strategies of smallholder poultry sector (SPS)

In developing economy, studies have identified cost of investment, inadequate infrastructure, and access to technical information, inputs and support systems, quality of manpower, nature of output pricing and informal market system as constraints to sustainable productivity of SPS. Lack of agribusiness management skill and poor access to information about the technicality of the poultry value addition process also compound the problems of sustainability of SPS. In some disadvantaged communities, market or price risk is high, such that, producers might not have access to buyers, hence, disposing the actors to sell products at any available price well below cost of production. Unpredictability of the system of production can also cause a challenge where products are of low quality and increase mortality rate which in turn lower income. Lack of policies direction, either directly or and indirectly can lead to theft or direct loss of poultry inputs and output. Policies can as well be linked to poor management skill on the part of the owner. Traditional belief, in terms of ownership and gender understanding, where female member of household might not claim ownership of poultry stocks despite her role in caring for the poultry can predisposed SPS to weak or no productivity.

Consequently, these constraints have limit the livelihood of actors, it has impaired there status and made them vulnerable despite their continuous engagement in smallholder poultry activities over the years. However, these actors have been dealing with the minimum capacity that their limited capital and expertise can cope with as a resilient strategy. They do not want to overstretch their scale, sometimes, due to lack of knowledge, non-accessible agricultural loans and input linkages. On poor infrastructure, these actors have design community-effort or participation as a resilience mechanism to remain in the business of poultry production. In some farm settlement, they jointly own electric power generators through cooperative system to solve power need of their business. In some large farm community, they contribute to buy electric power generating transformers to satisfy the power needs. Also, they contribute to have accessible roads through regular grading and maintenance for ease of movement of their poultry inputs and outputs.

Recently, smallholders’ poultry actors have started embracing membership in farmers’ cooperative societies as a resilient strategy to indirectly access extension services to improve their agribusiness management skill, have access to input linkages, understand group dynamics for relationship among themselves and customers, as well as get information about pricing and market system, etc. The cooperative society has the potential to harness new system or technology from research and development agencies as well as private companies who are into service of poultry inputs suppliers or dealers. The cooperative society when organized and structured, has potential to benefit from cluster and off-taking/contract agribusiness modeling for value addition, marketing and selling strategies of products all year round and linkages to inputs like feeds, drugs, day-old chicks (DOCs), etc. The cooperative society is also disposed to business information on the utilization of credit and thrift funding services to support members’ business credit needs with single-digit interest rates. Beyond cooperative membership as resilience strategy, some smallholder poultry actors also engage in trading activities as supplementary livelihood to poultry farming business within their community. They do trade operations like selling other food items like rice, beans, smoked chicken and fish, eggs, groundnut oil, and other household foods within their communities in order to improve their daily revenue and achieve a higher social position. Also, some poultry farmers diversify into sales of poultry inputs like feeds, simple medicament and equipment and freshly processed chicken and or smoked chicken.

4. Conclusions

Smallholder poultry sector is significant in the aggregate economies of developing communities, providing employment, income and nutrients to households. The sector have various interrelated enterprises along the chain, which include, farming; raising of birds to produce broiler (meat) and layer (eggs), processor; transforming live bird into freshly processed meat, distributors; sales of poultry inputs like feeds, medicaments and equipment, logistic provider, etc. The individual that handles these enterprises are conceptualized as actors. The activities performs by these actors are faced with series of challenges. However, the following are some of the resilient strategies they deployed in coping with the sector:

1. Trading as supplementary livelihood to poultry business

2. Contract farming through cluster to maximize profit

3. Cooperative membership for group or community participation to access inputs, information and market of products

4. Maintaining and sustaining same scale of production for many cycles

5. Integrated farming system, where poultry farmers also engage in vegetable cultivation