Salma changed her life by system change of Food Safety (FS) project
Name: Slama Akter; Address: Village: Galutia, Union : Selimpur, Dist: Tangail. Profession: Poultry Farmer
Background and previous situation of Salma
Salma Akter (30) is a poultry farmer who got married at the age of 16 years. Salma’s husband hada small poultry farm of 300 chickens where Slama worked in absence of her husband. About two years after marriage Slamas Husband wentabroad as alabor. In absence of Salma’s husband her grandmother did not give permission to run the poultry farm due to continuous loss. In 2017, Salama’s husband returned from abroad and planned to restart the poultry farm to maintain the family cost of 4 members.
Turning point to change the situation
In September 2018, Salma with her husband Md. Mukul participated in a daylong meeting with farmers community in Galutia Village of Tngail. In that meeting farmers were oriented on good farm management practices, vaccination system, farm biosecurity and litter management by upazila livestock officer and veterinary surgeon. In October 2018, Salama restarted her husband’s farm with new oriented knowledge gathered from BeezBistar Foundation (BBF) meeting.
Present situation: changes and benefits
After participation in the meeting, Salama and Mukul have been continuing their communication with upazila livestock office along with upazila consumer committee. They participated many events organized by BBF in the upazila level and got enriched on feed rules, regulation and good farm management practices by this time. Theyare now practicing safe control measures in farm management like use of separate cloth and shoe, use of foot bath, regular cleaning of feeder, drinker and follow good waste disposal system in the farm. Following good farm management practices and use ofvaccine, they are nowable to increase their farm profit instead of continuous loss earlier. They are now collecting Day Old Chick (DOC) and feed from licensed dealers and follow the Department of Livestock Services (DLS) officials supervision along with applying good hygienic practices. Before use of any medicine and drugs they now read carefully the instruction to maintain the withdrawal period properly. In 2019,they increased their farm size from 300 to 1500 capacity where both of them are giving their full effort to become successful poultry farmers. As Mukul and Salam restarted their farm business with their own capital they are now free from credit business from dealers that helped to reduce their farm production cost. Due to regular contact with local DLS officials and upazila consumer committee they had completed their farm registration and are now planning to start new shed of poultry farm in the name of Salama.
Challenges
Though Salam and Mukul are now running their farm with own capital still they faced challenges due to continuous price fluctuation of DOC, poultry feed and Livepoultry. Day by day poultry input like medicine, vitamins, vaccines, feed, DOC with labor cost are increasing whereas market price for live poultry are not increasing in the same way that will assure the profit margin for them.
Sustainability
Respective government authority should form a market price fixing unit to overcome the price fluctuation. Regular joint monitoring visit, farmers training and awareness program along with safe poultry sale center should be initiated to inspire others and to get fair price for safe products. Availability of soft loan from local bank especially for small scale poultry farmers can create the scope to avoid dealer credit business.