Africa Sustainable Livestock 2050: Livestock biosecurity from a business perspective

Download or read book Africa Sustainable Livestock 2050: Livestock biosecurity from a business perspective written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2022-06-27 with total page 19 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The growing population, urbanization and increasing incomes will result in an increased demand for animal source food products. To ensure the development of a healthy and productive livestock sector, investments are needed from the public and private sectors. We assess whether poultry producers are in a position to play a role in the development of healthy poultry systems by investing in biosecurity through examples of enterprise budgets of producers from Egypt, Kenya and Uganda. In all three countries, the most important revenue item is sale of broilers (>98 percent of total revenues). The two largest cost items are the purchase of day-old chicks (DOCs) and feed, covering 75 to 92 percent of total costs. Feed is the largest cost item at bigger farms (~5 000 birds per cycle) while purchase of DOCs is the largest cost item at smaller farms (~500 birds per cycle). The observed poultry businesses are profitable, profit margins range from 7 to 56 percent, and annual profits equal 2.3 (Kenya large farm) to 3.5 (Egypt) times the GDP per capita in the countries. Investment in biosecurity can potentially increase profits, however, the impact on profit is very context specific, depending on the different features of the businesses, their exposure to disease risk and market characteristics. We illustrate an example of a small farm in Uganda where profits increased by 10.8 percent after adopting three biosecurity practices.