Staff Reporter
DIMAPUR, NOVEMBER 19
Although Nagaland is the highest consumption of pork in the country, every year an average of 10,000 tons of pork per year worth INR 90 crores are exported from Nagaland to meet its domestic demand and apparently local pig farmers find it difficult to make a sustainable livelihood out of pig farming, underlined the Research team during its presentation on findings of piggery sub sectors in Nagaland. To improve rural livelihoods in the state, the North East Rural Livelihoods Project (NERLP) a project funded by World Bank and in association with Innovative Change Collaborative (ICCO India) organized a one-day stakeholder consultation workshop on ‘Piggery sub sectors study done in Nagaland’ at Circuit House, Dimapur today.
The consultation workshop aimed at sharing the research findings and recommendations of the study team on growing the piggery sub sector in Nagaland through market based interventions impacting livelihoods of small farmers.
During the course of the workshop, the Research team brought to light that the pig population in Nagaland has declined to 28% during the period of 2003-2014 and an estimated 21% of pigs slaughtered in Nagaland are exported to other states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
The workshop unearthed that constraint at producer level to produce sufficient pork for internal consumption was due to high cost of feed, supply of quality piglets, feeding practice which has high fuel expenses, lack of breeding policy, lack of delivery services and high mortality of piglet. It was established that 70% of cash outflow of fattening pigs was feed cost especially when requirement is high; high fluctuation in feed price and price rise both adversely affects the profit.
The key challenges in the scenario of Nagaland include regulated pork retail sale price by local town council, cost of pig feed and piglets. The transportation cost in Nagaland is said to be the highest than feed cost compared to other states across the country.
The solutions discussed at the workshop brought in supporting local entrepreneurs for production of feed, integrated farming practice by farmer and developing a cadre of Live Stock service providers at the village level.
The workshop was attended from institutions such as the NRC on Pig, ICAR; KVK Dimapur; NEPED; NABARD; SRTT; SBI; Youth Net, NGOs and private sector participants. It may be mentioned that NERLP is working in Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura for improving the livelihood of rural families.
In Nagaland, the project is covering Peren and Tuensang district. The Project is taking up among others, ‘piggery’, as one of the potential activity to scale up in a larger scale by intervening in production area and processing and seeks government support and private sector participation.
