(also known as day labour) in agriculture and non-agriculture appears the worst form
of livelihood for this sample of poorer households. Livestock in crop agriculture
appears better than raising livestock in households which have self-employment in
non-agriculture such as small business.
Access to education is a significant determinant of regular job and better non-farm
opportunities including international migration. Access to credit through the
programme helps to diversify with business and non-farm self-employment activities
but not statistically significant except that it is significant at 10% for wage
employment. It may indicate repayment pressure and low productivity of loan given
for poultry enterprise.
The following implications are pertinent:
There should be no doubt that poverty mitigation efforts like the Bangladesh Poultry
Model could reduce poverty incidence but the positive impact on welfare is much less
than impact evaluation studies estimate using qualitative measurement of income,
empowerment etc. Impact on welfare could have been much higher if some of the
supports were being made more flexible to choose a complementary livelihood or
another livelihood of their choice. For example training appeared a significant
determinant of livelihood choice. All 400 women of the sample were given training
on poultry related activities, but everybody is not interested in poultry and most of
them considered training ineffective because they were not interested in it. They
might enter into the training due to lack of alternative opportunities. Many poultry
farmers keep other livestock in addition to poultry, training may be extended to other
livestock farming.
Regular job and international migration are better routes out of poverty. As it is
possible to reach world wide through poultry enterprise, circulation of job and
migration related information could improve household access to other jobs while
some members are still involved in poultry production. Information package,
alternative training opportunities and education opportunities could be used as
incentives to improve productivity of poultry farming. The budget may partly be
managed by curtailing training to poorly performing poultry farmers.
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