Poultry Integrator and Sustainable Livelihood Security - A Study of Broiler Sector in Bengaluru Region

Sustainable livelihood is a multifaceted concept and refers to maintenance or enhancement of access of rural families to food and income generating activities on a long term basis. In the Indian context where average farm size is very small, ought to be viewed in the context of enhancement of productivity, production and profitability of the activity of the adopted by the farmer, above all, for improvement of economic conditions of the farmers. Livestock system is known to enhance sustainable livelihoods for farmers. The present research investigation study was taken up in Bengaluru region of Karnataka state with overall objective of finding sustainable livelihood of stakeholders in poultry broiler sector development. The study was based on primary data obtained from 44 broiler farmers. The information was collected through structured interview schedule. Taking into account the measures evolved to depict economic, educational, habitat, food, health security and extent of community participation of households attempt has been made to construct livelihood security index for each sample household. Based on the value obtained for livelihood security index sample households are categorized into low, moderate and households with high index value. Realizing the importance of evolving a single measure capturing the variations in indicators used to measure the management efficiency of poultry farmers, attempt was made to construct composite management index. First-five principal components considered for the analysis together captured nearly 70 per cent of variations in original data set. Principal components were run using R-software. The first-three principal component accounted for fifty per cent of variation in the data set as evident from Eigen values. Based on the value of the index poultry farmers are classified into low, moderate and high management orientation category. Nearly 30 per cent of the farmers were categorized under low and high category, while 40 per cent of farmers have moderate management orientation. The study indicates that the presence of strong institutions like Venkateswar Hatcheries Private Limited (VHPL) has provided required backward and forward linkages enabling sector to register high rate of growth. The broiler sector has played a vital role improving the economic status of rural households, especially vulnerable section and has provided strength to livelihood security to poultry farming families in the study area.