Strengthening food security through family poultry and crop integration

This scoping study is now complete has has formed the basis of a larger project Strengthening food and nutrition security through family poultry and crop integration in Tanzania and Zambia.

The majority of the world’s rural poor rely on raising livestock for their day to day living. Livestock contribute to both poverty alleviation and food security. 70-80% of rural households in southern and eastern Africa raise poultry. Poultry meat and eggs provide high quality protein and micronutrients that are more easily taken up by the human body than plant based nutrients. They also provide cash income to purchase food. These benefits are of notable significance to vulnerable community members such as growing children and people infected with HIV.

Poor quality agricultural production can be detrimental to human nutrition, for example contaminated meat and crops treated with poorly regulated pesticides can cause human illness and as a result avoidance of vital food resources by family groups or communities. These issues become especially raw in the overarchingly food insecure environments in rural eastern and southern Africa.

In search of robust evidence that can be used to maximise poultry and crop value chain efficiency and household food and nutrition security, this project sought to answer the following questions:

• Can strategic linkages between family poultry and crop value chains improve the socio-economic, biological efficiency and social equity of both operations?
• Can the health and production of family poultry and the trade of poultry products be increased by linking production to supplementary feed from cropping activities?
• Can increased efficiency of family poultry production and trade contribute to ecologically sustainable agriculture, sanitary food and improved human food security, health and wellbeing?