Lessons Learned from Nepal Community Livestock Development Project. Surya Singh
Lessons Learned from Nepal Community Livestock
Development Project and Recommended Future Directions
Surya B. Singh1
1.
Introduction
Community Livestock Development Project (CLDP) funded by the Asian
Development Bank, is in implementation since December 2005. The Department of
Livestock Services (DLS) under the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperative is the
implementing agency. The project has a total input of US$33.0 million, of which
US$ 20.0 million is a loan from the ADB. CLDP builds on the success of the Third
Livestock Development Project (TLDP) and its predecessors which were funded by
the ADB. It will be ending in December 2010.
The overall project objective is to reduce poverty amongst rural poor through gender
and socially inclusive development. Its purpose is to improve the levels of food
security, nutrition, incomes, and employment for 69,000 families (with an additional
95,000 indirect beneficiaries) through increased productivity of the livestock subsector in an environmentally sustainable and socially equitable manner. FAO was
sole sourced to provide technical assistance for training, guiding process-related
activities, technical support, privatizing the delivery of farmer services and inputs,
agro-processing and marketing.
The project functions on market/demand led approach, gender mainstreaming in all
components, public/private partnership arrangements, flexible project management,
local body capacity improvement and environmental management. The Project
covers 43 districts and is implemented in three modules: (1) Intensive livestock
production (ILP) in 22 districts; (2) Processing, marketing and commercialization in
21 mainly Terai districts in addition to the emerging areas in the ILP districts; and
(3) Multi-sector-approach-based higher altitude pilot project in five districts.
The project works with the NGOs (social mobilization), farmers (productivity
enhancement), entrepreneurs (processing and marketing) and stakeholders (synergy
and avoidance of program duplication). It also promotes private paravets to expand
veterinary services and artificial insemination in dairy animals.
1
Deputy Team Leader, FAO Consulting Services (UTF/057/NEP) to the Community Livestock
Development Project (ADB Loan 2071-NEP (SF).
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Lessons Learned from Nepal Community Livestock Development Project. Surya Singh
2.
Achievements to date:
By the end of June 2009, the project achieved 80 percent of its physical target at 87
percent of loan elapse period (Supervision Mission, July 2009). Recent studies
indicated that goat program has provided annual supplementary income of over Rs
10,000 (US$ 128) to each poor household with increase in goat off-take 31% and the
flock size from 2-3 in the beginning to 4-5 adults per family at present. Goat
program for poverty alleviation has been proven as an effective means to building
family assets through redistribution of assets and empower women and the
disadvantaged.
Within two years of project intervention, household per capita income from milk sale
alone has increased from Rs 3,922 to Rs 7,436 (US$95) in areas where the support
for establishment of milk chilling centres propelled increased improved animal
keeping2 and fresh milk marketing3. This trend also had positive impact on family
nutrition, as 15 to 30% of total farm produce (milk) was reported to be home
consumed. Support in supply of breeding buffalo bulls and AI services, and
extension of annual and perennial forage production services have also been
instrumental to improve farm productivity and reduce women time to collect fodder
by 2-3 hours per day. Project supported paravets have also been providing veterinary
and AI services. Project support in processing and marketing has helped improve the
hygiene of meat and dairy processing units creating at least 5,000 regular jobs.
2
3
A 12% increase in buffalo cow number and 20% in cattle cow number
Milk collection increased up to 72%.
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Lessons Learned from Nepal Community Livestock Development Project. Surya Singh
3.
Lessons learned
During its four year of implementation, the project has learned a number of lessons,
which would be equally relevant across the developing world. These lessons are
discussed below under two broad categories: (i) planning and implementation; and
(ii) extension and inputs delivery.
3.1
Planning and implementation:
1. Targeted poverty alleviation (goat production) program for the poor and
the disadvantaged helped build their assets (goats) and empower them in the
society through development of institutional and informational base. The
contribution of such programs to national economic growth could be small
but their contribution in the national development process is immeasurable.
2. Involvement of the grassroots political entity - the Village Development
Committees in planning, implementing and monitoring project activities
could significantly improve project performance due to people’s ownership,
transparency and accountability. This system also builds the capacities of the
local institutions in development planning and implementation.
3. Community level (bottom up) planning is an effective tool for equity
(inclusion of women and disadvantaged families) and market-led
development interventions. This approach will encompass the rich farmers
with interest in milk production (high risk bearing group) as well as the poor
with interest in small animals and birds (low risk bearing group). Moreover,
the planning process by itself lends empowerment of the poor and the
disadvantaged.
4. Integrated vegetable and dairy farming has been found to complement
each other - manure produced by animals used for organic vegetable
production and the vegetable wastes particularly during the winter and dry
season supplementing green feed to livestock. This system contributed to
gain in land and labor use efficiency.
5. Livestock Action Team (LAT) at district level chaired by the member of
the District level political body (the Local Development Officer in his/her
absence) and representatives of relevant line agencies, financial institutions,
farmer and processors’ organizations, and local NGOs is an effective
instrument to facilitate project implementation. The District Livestock
Services Officer works as the member secretary.
6. Social mobilization before technical intervention should be the major
strategy to get active participation of the poor and the disadvantaged. A
Social Mobilizer with basic technical training in animal husbandry is an
added advantage in project implementation.
7. Public-private partnership is a cost effective tool to encourage
entrepreneurs for investment. Technical support along with a small grant
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Lessons Learned from Nepal Community Livestock Development Project. Surya Singh
attracted larger investments. This was more evident in meat and dairy shops
improvement and milk chilling vat establishment programs.
8. Regular objective field monitoring and the involvement of media in the
project implementation processes improved project performance
significantly.
3.2
Extension and inputs delivery:
1. Low investment and quick result-oriented “goat for the poor” program
was overwhelmingly taken up by the non-technical development agencies as
one of their main poverty alleviation program. These programs, however,
suffered from supply of low quality goats and inadequate technical support
services. There is an apparent need to implement goat improvement program
and expand technical service delivery system at community level. Equal
attention is required to environmental sustainability.
2. Establishment of farmer managed forage resource sites in scattered but
strategic locations and use of pluralistic extension approach helped expand
forage development program quickly.
3. Experiential field based/hands-on training and exposure visits resulted
quicker adoption of new technologies than class room training.
4. Inculcating business culture (entrepreneurship) among the farmers and
entrepreneurs resulted in planned investment and improved business
management. There is a need of updating the curricula and strengthening the
agricultural colleges/universities so that the agricultural/livestock/veterinary
graduates are able to provide competent advisory services to the farmers.
5. Micro-credit was not attractive in areas where there were limited offfarm/quick income (wage labor) opportunities, because of high interest rate,
which of course is associated with the increased management cost of the
micro-credit institutions.
Lessons learned from the implementation of higher altitude pilot livelihood
improvement program:
• Lack of road connectivity constrained exploitation of geographic potential
for production and marketing of high value crops like off season vegetables,
fruits and non-timber forest products mainly the medicinal and aromatic
plants.
•
•
Limited field staff, coverage of large geographic area and lack of objective
incentives for field staff has resulted in short of field support.
Service delivery constrained due to scattered settlement and difficult
terrain. Private sector should be preferred over government sector for supply
of inputs (transfer by air) due to inflexible financial norms of the later.
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Lessons Learned from Nepal Community Livestock Development Project. Surya Singh
•
•
4.
Apparent shortage of farm labor due to seasonal migration of youths for
remittances has constrained farming in a significant way.
Savings and credit at farmer groups level has helped in meeting urgent cash
needs of farm families.
Emerging trends
In the recent years, there have been new challenges and opportunities emerging in
the Nepalese livestock sector. These are discussed below.
1. Dairy production: There is increasing gap between supply and demand of
milk. Local production in the formal chain meets only about 25% of municipal
demands for milk and milk products and the rest is met by import. The dairy
industries are already short supplied by about 300,000 liter a day during the
flush season and about 450,000 liter a day during the lean season. The gap will
further widen in future as the demand for milk and milk products is expected to
grow by about 11 percent per annum, if the existing national potential for dairy
production is not captured. Some farmers have responded this opportunity. But
many of these farms are located along the main highway or in townships. They
are also facing the following constraints:
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Critical shortage of dairy animals as dairy heifer rearing practice is not
common due to small landholding and lack of cost effective heifer rearing
technology.
Lack of irrigation and high opportunity costs of land and labor
particularly on the main highways and townships are the major challenges
for dairy production.
Inadequate breeding support services. In many instances, Holstein
cows are inseminated with semen produced locally from Jersey bulls of
unknown genetic quality. The genetic quality of dairy animals is
degenerating.
Shrinking farm labour has been becoming a serious problem due to
migration of youth for off-farm jobs within or outside countries.
Inadequate financial service is a serious problem particularly in the
rural areas as the rural branches of the financial institutions were closed
down due to insurgency in the past. Investment in dairy animals has been
drastically curtailed.
2. Meat production: About Rs 2.5 billion equivalent of foreign exchange is
spent annually to meet the municipal demands for meat animals and meat
products. People in the Mid- and Far-western regions depend mainly on Indian
supply for eggs. Prices of meat and eggs have doubled during the last two
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Lessons Learned from Nepal Community Livestock Development Project. Surya Singh
years. With this opportunity, there is increasing involvement of youth in
commercial livestock farming (dairy, goat, poultry and pig farming) in the
recent years. Such a trend can only have long term positive impact on national
development and the maintenance of peace in the country.
3. Farm advisory services: There is a big gap between the specialized and
expanded farmers’ service needs and those delivered by DLS. There is a need
to promote private service providers to meet these needs and further expand the
production pockets.
4. Farm labor: Labor shortage in rural areas has been negatively affecting land
productivity. Commercialization (semi-) of the farming system as well as
maximizing labor and land efficiency should be the main strategy for
accelerated growth of the agriculture sector.
5. Due to increasing awareness on carbon trade, there is increasing closure of
community forests from animal grazing and tree cutting. This trend will push
the poor further away from livestock keeping who have been depending on free
forest input (feed).
6. There is growing public concern on food quality and safety. But effective
implementation of food quality management system has remained and will
remain as perennial challenge until the predictability is established.
5.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Good governance (transparency, accountability and predictability), social inclusion,
participation of local stakeholders, efficiency in service delivery, inculcating
business culture and improving the efficiency of land and labor and eventually the
whole production system should be the prime principles to be applied in livestock
sector development efforts. Community level bottom up planning approach should
address the issue of socio-economic inclusion. Application of technologies to
mitigate the impact of climate change should also get high attention.
The commercialization of dairy sector should be on watershed/road corridor based,
away from the main highways and the townships and inter-mixed with high value
agriculture crops. This approach should be supported by infrastructure development
programs like, farm roads, irrigation (including extension of water conservation
technologies), power connection, farm mechanization, marketing structure
developments (eg., cold stores) and other social development activities like drinking
water and sanitation, and biogas and improved stove installation (for the poor).
Forage intensification of non-agricultural farm lands with focus on developing strong
winter green forage requires equal attention.
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Lessons Learned from Nepal Community Livestock Development Project. Surya Singh
There is also a need of strengthening dairy cattle and buffalo improvement program
and implement intensive local cattle upgrading program to meet the demands for
improved dairy animals and milk. Efforts are also required to expand genetic
selection of local hill goats and introduction of meat breeds like Boer.
In the remote areas with potential for milk production but lacking fresh milk market
access should be supported with “School Milk Program” to provide income to the
poor, address children’s malnutrition, create local dairy businesses (provide jobs)
and develop enabling environment for larger investments in dairying in future. The
income opportunity in these areas could be an effective instrument to engage the
youth in farming for long term positive impact on national development and the
maintenance of peace in the country. In addition, these areas should be supported with
capability enhancement programs like nutrition, health and sanitation, and literacy.
There is a need to inculcate business culture (entrepreneurship) from farm level to
industry and retails. Appropriate cost minimization tools should be useful for
farmers. The industries should be guided by business plans.
Private sector service providers should be promoted for delivery of specialized
technical and business services across the value chain and expand service
coverage/beneficiaries through enhanced capacities of the cooperatives to work as
centres for technical and financial services to its members. The concept of public
private partnership should be further consolidated.
Since buffalo is valued both for milk and meat production, appropriate strategy
should be applied to at least maintain buffalo population and improve its
productivity. Local terminal markets in the buffalo production corridors could be a
tool for this purpose. As buffalo milk is highly preferred by the Nepalese consumers,
whole buffalo milk marketing should also be promoted.
Finally, Food quality and safety should get greater attention in future than ever
before.
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