Jharkhand Women’s Self Supporting Poultry Federation: A Perfect State of Cooperation
Jharkhand Women’s Self Supporting Poultry Federation: A Perfect State of Cooperation
Authors : M.V. Ashok and Pawan Ojha
The Jharkhand Womens’ Poultry Cooperative is growing into a statewide movement through the successful implementation of the Small Holder Broiler Farming Model.
A detailed market study commissioned by PRADAN in collaboration with the poultry industry in 2002 showed that the whole of Jharkhand is a huge deficit market for broiler birds. The daily sales of live bird was estimated to be around 80 metric ton (mt) with major consumption centers located in big and smaller towns in the industrial and mining areas. As against the demand, the average daily production in Jharkhand did not exceed more than 12 mt. The huge gap between the demand and supply was met through supply from nearby states like West Bengal, Orissa and Chhattisgarh and also from far off Madhya Pradesh. The annual growth of the poultry market in Jharkhand was estimated to be around 20 per cent in real terms.
Seeing this immense potential, the members of self-help groups (SHGs) of Kuru block of Lohardaga with support from PRADAN (Professional Assistance for Development Action, a voluntary organization involved in the promotion of livelihoods for poor rural families), decided to take up poultry activity as a livelihood opportunity. With women belonging to resource poor families with low risk-taking ability, PRADAN thought it prudent to try out the idea of small-scale poultry units with each producer rearing not more than 300 poultry birds per cycle. Efforts made towards collectivizing small poultry growers in a cluster yielded very positive results in terms of helping the producers in reaching economies of scale and to gain bargaining power to negotiate with the market on fairer terms. This mechanism was institutionalized through establishment of the Poultry Producers’ Cooperative involving all the producer women.