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Animal breeding: better nutrition and a higher income
By WV Bolivia Communications Office on 18 Dec 2007
The 1st Agriculture and Livestock Fair of Santivañez, Bolivia, took place on 25 November, promoting the local meat production. Together with the Municipality, the Area Development Programme (ADP) Santivañez organised the presentation of a variety of traditional dishes people could buy.
Visitors bought more than 3,000 dishes prepared with duck, rabbit, pork and chicken. The demand exceeded the supply by far. In the afternoon, visitors enjoyed folkloric dances and songs, and they could have a look at the exhibited animals. And the ADP awarded a prize to the best producers of the year.
The event had a series of strategic objectives set within the framework of the agroecology and economic development areas of the ADP.
At the moment, the programme is working with target groups composed of families that started to breed ducks, pigs and carps. The ADP provides every household with a certain number of animals which they can breed and consume. The surplus is for sale.
The principal objective of the target group is to eliminate malnourishment in the children of the area through the incorporation of food products with a high protein content.
The second objective is to give the households an opportunity to start up a profitable business with a low investment. The idea behind the fair was to promote the consumption of local chicken, carp, pork and duck among the population of Cochabamba and in the population of other communities, thus fomenting market access for the producing households.
At the moment, there are two future projects: a pork, rabbit and duck sausage-making project that is already being developed and that will be officially started at the beginning of 2008; and a mill funded from sources outside the ADP.
Thanks to the special projects funded by WV Canada, more than 200 families breed different types of animals and they also produce potatoes. More than half of the families breed Pekinese ducks, producing a total number of 12,000 ducks a year.
Thanks to the ducks, I can give my children more
Emiliana lives in Santivañez, and is a single mother with two boys and four girls. She participated in the special Pekinese duck project since the very beginning.
Two weeks ago, she sold the second group of ducks she bred. "I sold 119 ducks." Emiliana says. "This man came and he liked my ducks because they were big and beautiful, he wanted them all... In the end, I earned more than BOB 500. This time, my oldest daughter helped me. And she did very well - even the kitchen won in the fair. She is very proud now and says that she wants to continue working with the ducks. I never thought we would earn all this money."
Emiliana works in a small restaurant where her wages are very low. Now, thanks to the ducks she has been able to double her income.
"I am grateful to the ADP, because now I can take care of my children," she says. "Before breeding ducks, I could not take care of them very well, and I owed people money because I did not earn enough money. But now, my situation is improving with the money I am making with the ducks…
"When they told me to start breeding ducks, I said I did not have any capital to breed them and, well, in the end I did things slowly, step by step.
"Before, I was very thin because I was worried about my children, I did not have enough food to give them. But now I can even give them a snack for school, a sandwich or so. Thanks to the ADP."
Emiliana’s six children are sponsored by World Vision, which helps them to go to school, have school materials, clothes and a Christmas present. "I say thank you to the ADP, because all my children have notebooks, even the youngest one," she says.
In the future, Emiliana wants to continue breeding ducks and start breeding pigs, because with what she earned with her first sale she bought a stove and a gas bottle to prepare fried pork. She hopes that one day she will be able to have her own business so she could spend more time with her children.
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