Socio-economic, marketing and gender aspects of village chicken production in the tropics: A review of literature
This paper (PDF) by ILRI reviews the literature that focuses on the socio-economic, gender and marketing aspects of chicken production in the tropics. Chicken production is an essential agricultural activity practiced by almost all rural communities throughout the developing world. Most importantly, chicken is a valuable asset to the local population, especially for the disadvantaged groups and less favoured areas of rural Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. This is because chicken production contributes to food security, poverty alleviation and gender equality. However, the level of production and productivity is still low and constrained by many social, economic, and market related factors. In most areas of the world (e.g. Africa, Latin America and Asia), the routine management of poultry are undertaken by women, Nevertheless, there are still big gaps to get gender-based disaggregated data to figure out women’s roles and responsibilities in the family poultry production. Furthermore, the review indicated that in most areas, chicken research was focused on production and productivity, with little attention for marketing. A few studies mentioned that biological aspects of chicken production, such as feeding and breeding, are efficient if it is accompanied by efficient marketing systems since, efficient marketing system is rewarding to all agents involved in the production, marketing and consumption of chicken. Therefore, an efficient marketing system has paramount importance in the chicken production. The role of poultry in escaping extreme poverty has frequently been indicted there are many constraints to the development of the smallholder poultry production. The main challenges for the development of smallholder chicken production include: disease control; protection against predators; better feeding; genetic improvement; better marketing; training and management; access to production inputs; poor infrastructure and access to capital; the lack of farmer organizations and the creation of conducive institutions and governmental policies. In this respect policies and actions need to focus on reducing the constraints related to chicken production.