Family poultry and food security Research requirements in science, technology and socioeconomics.doc

family poultry and food security: research requirements in science, technology and socioeconomicse. babafunso sonaiyadepartment of animal science, obafemi awolowo university, ile-ife, nigeriae-mail: .ngabstractfamilies use various but largely extensive management systems to take advantage of common village resources to produce poultry eggs and meat. scientists and professionals interested in this endeavour have interacted for about a decade in a network - african network for rural poultry development (anrpd which later became international network for family poultry development (infpd). the research agenda of this network gave priority to genetics, health and baseline data. much progress has been made in these areas. in order to contribute to food security, the research agenda must give still greater attention to natural and social sciences using indigenous knowledge and local conditions as the basis for participatory action research in health, management, feeding and reproduction. natural products chemistry, population biology and process modelling expertise are required. abilities in evaluation of resource utilization and whole-system optimization that are built on a thorough understanding of the culture and society will be required to assure significant food security contributions from family poultry.keywords: family poultry research, food security, natural and social sciences. introductionfamily flocks are kept under four subsystems of management (bessei, 1987; sonaiya, 1990a,b; koster, 1996). most family producers use the free range, backyard and semi-intensive systems, in that order.family poultry producers are quite distinct from owners of medium-to-large scale poultry farms that may even be sited in rural areas. family poultry producers have only basic western education, are usually resource poor (including land) and wish to minimise their risk exposure. the bulk of family flock producers have their primary occupation in non-agricultural or other crop and livestock enterprises apart from poultry. data collected annually for 12 years (1987 to date) by our rural poultry research project in nigeria consistently indicate that 70 per cent of the surveyed producers have family consumption and additional income as their objective compared with 30 per cent of respondents who have family consumption as the sole objective (sonaiya, 1999). with smallholder farmers and traditional livestock keepers, mixed enterprises such as chicken/cattle, chicken/duck/goat, duck/rice/fish, etc, are common. each enterprise is aimed at a particular objective. the practice of the fulani (fulbe, peul) pastoralists in west africa illustrates this. they herd cattle and sheep as their primary occupation but raise chickens for domestic consumption. they have developed their own strain of chickens in a closed nucleus flock managed by the bororo clan of the fulani (olori, 1991, sonaiya, 1999). the maasai of east africa also have the same practice.food security is defined (idrc, 1994) as ensuring that all members of a household have access to an adequate diet to lead an active and normal life. it has two essential elements: food availability and food access, both of which can be achieved through domestic production, purchase or gift. what kind of future research is required for family poultry to enhance food security? idrc (1994) reported that a farmer participant at a food security workshop in zimbabwe said “if researchers now want to come to help us in matters of food, they must know we want money(capitals mine).” research relating family poultry to food security must therefore address how to make more food available to the family and how to enable the family make money (or save money) in the process of producing family poultry.the importance of family poultry in improving nutritional status and incomes of poor and even landless families has been repeatedly demonstrated (fao, 1982, 1987; ifpri, 1999). forssido (1986) estimated that family village chickens in ethiopia provide 12 kg of poultry meat per inhabitant per year whereas cattle provide 5.3 kg . family poultry has been shown as an important source of cash income to families in asia (ramm et al, 1984; setioko, 1997) and latin america (rauen et al, 1990). small scale and backyard poultry enables the poor to earn income from birds scavenging on common property village land or fed household waste. family poultry offers one of the few markets that poor, rural people can join even if they lack substantial amounts of land, training and capital. the bangladesh rural poultry development programme clearly showed that families without poultry were poorer than those with poultry (jensen, 1996) and that poultry was usually the first step in the drive towards increased incomes through the acquisition of larger animals like goats, sheep and cattle ( saleque and mustafa, 1996) .a decade of family poultry researchin low income food deficit countries (lifdc) with high population densities, traditional animal and crop farming systems cannot survive without modification. appropriate technological changes must be based on relevant research in science, technology and socio-economics. the first, second and third workshops of the african network for rural poultry development (sonaiya, 1990, 1997 and 2000) as well as the cta seminar on smallholder rural poultry production (cta-dlg, 1990) have outlined the research agenda for rural poultry development and identified three priority areas of research health (mainly epidemiology and vaccination against newcastle disease - ncd), breeding and breed adaptability and productivity, and socio-economics of the smallholder system and the sustainability of technological interventions. characterization of indigenous birds predated anrpd (nwosu, 1979, oluyemi, 1979) and continues even now (wimmers et al, 1999). however, in line with the vision of horst (1989), a lot of breeding research has been done (mathur and horst, 1989; katule, 1991; haaren-kiso et al, 1995, horst et al, 1996). similarly, ncd research has been vigorous with particular attention to field vaccination studies (ideris et al, 1990; jagne et al, 1991 for examples). a comprehensive review was done by spradbrow (1993). there were a few reports on economics of family poultry (obi and sonaiya, 1995; the bin, 1996; farrell, 1997) but the area of socio-economics obviously requires greater attention.the idrc workshop on food systems under stress in africa (idrc, 1994) echoed this need and recommended, inter alia: that: research should build upon existing local knowledge; research teams should be interdisciplinary with a strong social science component and be action-oriented; and that participatory methods should be used where possible during all phases of research from problem identification to the definition of solutions. the development workers course held at the course centre tune, greve, denmark in march 1999 focused on the theme: “poultry as a tool in poverty eradication and promotion of gender equality” (proceedings are available at the internet address: http:/www.husdyr.htm/php/tune99/index ). the course participants identified research areas still needed to be: disease (including nutritional diseases), nutrition, genetics, socio-economics, management, marketing and processing, monitoring and evaluation. amongst this list, feed and nutrition has been receiving good research attention as shown in the 1999 infpd electronic conference coordinated so well by gueye (proceedings available at: /waicent/faoinfo/agricult/aga/agap/lps/fampo.htm ). in spite of this welcome attention, there has been insufficient research interest in family poultry by national research systems and the international (cgiar) institutes.for the future, the research approach must continue to be holistic, multidisciplinary and participatory. obviously, the research methods chosen will depend on the topics of relevance but the emphasis must be on providing scientists with a sufficiently broad menu of methodologies that will allow attempts to answer important questions of relevance to poor families. food security must be an obvious consideration for on-farm and participatory research. however, research should be done in all locations (on-farm, on-station, laboratory) and at all levels institutional, national, and international. required natural science research bell (1999) made a very aposite call for a wider audience within the biological sciences for family poultry research. this wider audience, he rightly pointed out, will enable family poultry specialists productionists, nutritionists, veterinarians, geneticists, economists and extensionists to discuss experimental protocols and even field trials with those outside these immediate family poultry disciplines. one area of biological science that can help stimulate family poultry research is natural product science.the use of natural products in various aspects of family poultry is widespread. natural products chemistry can make significant contribution to avian ethnoveterinary medicine. newcastle disease is found virtually everywhere with family poultry except some ocean islands. owners of family poultry everywhere report that they have preparations for treating ncd, a viral disease. but the common cold, also a viral disease, has treatment chemicals including vitamin c. in west africa, the water extract of the spotted pumpkin (lageneria breviflora) has been indicated to contain such treatment chemicals for ncd. human pharmacologists have investigated the properties of some of the chemicals in this pumpkin.l. breviflora robert (formerly adenopus breviflorus, benth) family cucurbitaceae is a climber found all over the rain forest of west africa. the fruit extract has abortifacient and anticonvulsant, analgesic and antimicrobial activities (elewude, 1982). the oxytocin-like properties of the aqueous extract of the whole fruit on uterine strips of pregnant rats has been reported by ojewole and elujoba (1982) and was attributed to an anti-implantation activity. the fruit is used in african traditional medicine and is one of the reputable efficacious plants among the traditional convulsant and smallpox remedies. the fruit extract has been reported to possess antibacterial (adesina and akinwusi, 1984) and anti-fertility (elujoba et al., 1985) activities the constituents from the extract of the fruit pulp (elujoba and el-affy, 1986) have been shown to include two saponins containing oleanolic acid, sitosterol, stigmasterol and a mixture of inorganic compounds. the seeds showed the presence of montanyl alcohol, palmitic, oleic, linoleic, stearic and arachidic acids (elujoba and hymete, 1987; elujoba et. al., 1991). in our laboratory, hemagglutination inhibition tests of cockerel blood sera obtained before or 10 days after challenge with ndv gave the same results for control birds as for birds that had been offered l.breviflora water extracts (250g/1.5l) for six weeks.trials of the effect of extracts of l. vulgaris fruit and the bark of parkia filicoidea on ncd have been reported in nigeria (nwude and ibrahim, 1980). in zimbabwe, ncd is treated with the leaves of cassia didymobotrya and the latex of euphorbia matabelensis were used (chavunduka, 1976) while in tanzania it is the stem of euphorbia candelabrum or the fruit of capsicum annuum with the leaves of iboza multiflora that are used. common hot peppers (c. annuum), the smaller the size the hotter they are, are generally used to fight common cold symptoms. most family poultry producers feed hot peppers to their birds as a prophylaxis or treatment but maybe there is another reason. work in our laboratory (brown, 1996) confirmed previous reports that feeding peppers to laying hens apart from enhancing yolk colour also increases egg size.another area of natural products use is in fighting parasites. the use of ficus exasperata leaves to remove ectoparasites especially mites and lice from the body of birds in the coop or in overnight housing is also widely reported by respondents in our longitudinal field studies. in a preliminary study that we have not yet published, brooding hens were surrounded with fresh (t1) or dried (t2) f. exasperata leaves or with fresh hibiscus sinensis leaves (t3) which have similar dimensions as ficus leaves. the leaves were changed daily for 21 days and total counts of mites on leaves were made. the mean weekly mite count was 446, 105 and 4 for t1, t2 and t3, respectively. it was concluded that fresh ficus exasperata leaves attracted more mites than the other two treatments. the leaves of f. exasperata apparently release volatile substances (pheromones?) that attract the insects and the hairs on the leaves then trap them. or are there other chemicals and mechanisms involved? other plants are similarly employed. in zimbabwe, thamnosma africana is used to repel fleas and ants simply by throwing the plant into chicken runs (watt and breyer-brandwijk, 1962). in nigeria, the leaves of bandeiraea simplicifolia are put in hen houses to kill lice (dalziel, 1937; nwude and ibrahim, 1980). in senegal, the leaves of calotropis procera (whose extracts are used for coagulating milk in nigeria) are used to kill lice on poultry (dalziel, 1937; watt and breyer-brandwijk, 1962). the use of ash (hot or cold) in prevention of ectoparasites from the overnight or laying coop is also well reported. the dried leaves and twigs of guiera senegalensis are burned in poultry houses to reduce ectoparasites in general. ash from the burnt leaves of carica papaya, nicotiana rustica and n. tabacum is rubbed into the feathers as a protection against lice infestation (nwude and ibrahim, 1980). does the smoke or the ash affect the antennae of the insects? does the type of plant that is burned matter?there are research questions related to the biology of feeding and watering and natural incubation. birds have no olfactory lobes and are guided to their food by sight. does the auditory meatus play any role in feeding as it does in mating and other agonistic behaviour? most family poultry producers call their birds for feeding. is it merely a pavlovian response to the sight of the feeder/owner? most producers do not offer water to their free ranging birds trusting the ability of the birds to find their own water. some who offer water observe the reluctance of the birds to drink water. this has hindered vaccination by the water route in our field experiments. will brightly coloured waterers attract the birds to drink? if so, which colour will be most effective? what will be the effect of the type of light (natural sun, moon; artificial white, coloured) have on the feeding and drinking habits of scavenging chickens? the results from commercial poultry can be easily adapted here. free ranging hens usually lay eggs and incubate them in shallow dug holes in the ground. what is the effect of soil physical properties like temperature, porosity, particle size, etc. on the incubation regime and hatchability?the population dynamics of whole village flocks is important but very difficult to ascertain. bell (1999) pointed out how, in many of our surveys, we need to know the numbers of eggs, chicks, growers and adults and their variation over time. since free range birds are nearly feral, the theories of population biology and of cycles in predator-prey populations can be employed. the use of the calculation method for obtaining the scavengeable feed resource base (sfrb, roberts and gunaratne, 1992) requires a fairly good idea of the whole village flock. in densely populated areas with contiguous villages, the problem is compounded. viable mathematical and statistical models are required for flock population estimation during cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. the need for more appropriate experimental and statistical designs for use in on-farm poultry research is indicated by the extreme mobility of the animal units due to scavenging, the high rate of missing cases due to sociocultural (gift, sacrifices) and economic (sale, sharecropping) imperatives ( sonaiya et al., 1993). the measurement method of estimating sfrb requires confronting questions of ecology related to interspecies competition for the sfrb since both feral and domesticated animals have access to the sfrb.some required research in technologyappropriate technology can enhance the natural reproductive processes and, if necessary, replace them. there are low capacity incubators available but most require electricity. there is need to produce solar and other alternative energy sources dependent incubators for use in remote areas. the prototypes developed by the usaid, the french and others may need to be further adapted. natural brooding of the chicks by the hen could be supplemented by supplying heat at night. the hot cooking places supply heat for the early night when kitchens are used as overnight shelters. a slow and clean burning fuel such as wood coal may maintain sufficient temperature in closed kitchens. other simple technology brooders are needed. while kitchens can provide shelter for the night, predator deterrents are needed for the day time. birds scavenging in the backyard and kitchens gardens can be protected by spreading a fishing net in the eastern side or on top of the whole area where aerial predators are a real problem. where raised platforms are used for climbing vegetables, no extra precaution may be needed. prevention of aerial predation on the open range and of terrestrial predation is far more challenging. alessandro finzi (1998, personal communication) has information on cheap and simple methods of fighting flying predators by tying nylon ropes in parallel across the area where poultry are more frequently scavenging.vaccination against ncd, gumboro and f