Source: Sebastian Higgins/MIID (2018)
Written by: Ryan Michael Sherman
Edited by: Eghosa Asemota and Kathleen Egan
This research was funded, supported, and conducted in collaboration with Myanmar Institute for Integrated Development (MIID) and The Livelihoods and Food Security Fund (LIFT).
Introduction
Myanmar’s recent history is marked by isolation, conflict, and slow development. Encouraging trends in economic growth following political and social reforms in 2011 have been due largely to natural gas extraction and export. Compared to other Southeast Asian countries, Myanmar continues to lag behind in human development indicators such as life expectancy, child mortality, and access to basic services, particularly in rural areas.[1]
Although much of rural Myanmar has yet to benefit from recent economic gains, a newfound openness to the international community has allowed researchers and development organizations to begin working in rural areas. This has created a new body of reports and studies in regions where reliable information about agriculture and human health outcomes has been previously nonexistent. This new literature has informed efforts to relieve the worst symptoms of chronic poverty.
While long-term studies and in-depth analyses remain unavailable, reports agree that upland Chin State is one of the most vulnerable areas of the country. For outcomes related to agricultural development, human health, indebtedness, and food insecurity, Chin State consistently ranks among the lowest in Myanmar.[2][3] Poor roads and its remote location in the Arakan mountains are serious obstacles for infrastructure development, delivery of aid and basic services, access to markets, and integration into value chains.
Small land plots and challenging topography in Chin State make most smallholder farms unable to support household nutritional needs.[4] Raising agricultural productivity depends upon low-cost agricultural upgrades, resource-sensitive agricultural methods, and the improvement of farmer knowledge and skills.
Intensive poultry and aquaculture systems for small farms, like those extended by MIID, are new to Chin State. Traditional low input and output chicken production has relied on foraging for much of the chicken diet. Aquaculture likewise incorporates few inputs and is characterized by low rates of fish growth.[5]
While aquaculture and poultry production offer a high-protein food source for household consumption and high-value agricultural products for sale, Chin farmers reported market isolation and lack of market information as key barriers to the purchasing of inputs necessary to increase these production systems.
Since 2013, MIIDs efforts in Chin State have focused on agriculture extension, value chain development, sustainable natural resource management, nutrition knowledge, gender issues, and capacity building. Efforts to reduce protein human protein deficiency has focused on the potential of rural aquaculture and chicken production to improve nutrition outcomes. Alleviating food insecurity in Chin State requires practical steps to create sustainable feed pathways for upland poultry production and aquaculture.
Building on this foundation, this report focuses on the key nutritional feed gaps that limit the capacity of chicken and fish production. To mitigate these gaps, practical steps are needed to improve crucial market linkages, educate farmers in targeted feed and livestock nutrition, and discover local feed pathways within the context of integrated farming models.
An Overview of Sustainable Feed Research in Chin State, Myanmar
In the Spring of 2018, MIID staff and a Cornell graduate student initiated a project to assess the feed constraints on chicken and fish production systems of rural farmers. The main objective was to identify the constraints limiting key nutritional components in feeds and provide practical steps to overcome these constraints.
Farmers expressed a strong desire to learn new feed techniques and identify new sources for feed. Many identified the lack of market pathways as a key constraint. While survey responses demonstrated a general understanding of the importance of improving fish and chicken diets, they also revealed a lack of specific knowledge about nutritional requirements for high growth. Survey results showed farmers did not plan to incorporate local sources of protein such as meat scraps or legumes into future feed regimes, nor did they know how to place orders for protein-rich feed sources, such as sunflower seed cakes or dry fish feed, from (relatively new) lowland feed outlets.
The lack of targeted knowledge and access to high protein feed are identified as the two most serious obstacles for increasing production rates of aquaculture and poultry production in Chin State. Our recommendations include improvements to crucial market linkages, steps to educate farmers in targeted feed and livestock nutrition, and methods for taking advantage of local nutritional sources.
Methodology
The assessment of feed constraints and solutions relied on quantitative analysis of on farm resources, cost-benefit analysis based on current market prices, the administration of surveys, and correspondence with international experts, local expertise, and interviews with the Department of Fishery.
Surveys were designed to characterize on-farm availability of feed resources, nutritional gaps in chicken diets, farmers’ intended use for chicken surpluses, and farmer preferences for securing feed. These surveys were administered in ten project villages in Hakha Township with seventy-seven farmer participants in MIID’s Chicken House Project (twenty-nine men and forty-eight women). Farmers were asked a series of quantitative and qualitative questions. Quantitative questions asked about the amounts of feed available for chickens from on-farm sources, chicken death rates, and transportation details. Open-ended follow-up questions allowed for the contextualization of results in terms of farm circumstances and farmer preferences. Farmer turnout was medium, with an average of eight farmers from MIID farmer groups in attendance for each meeting. Focus groups were also held at the MIID office in Hakha with twenty-five farmers practicing aquaculture.
Surveys were designed to focus on the quantities of feed in poultry production (rather than aquaculture) for several reasons: first, some kind of free-range poultry production is already practiced by almost all villagers, while aquaculture is practiced by relatively few and only in select villages as it is highly constrained by topography and water availability. Secondly, thanks to the recent chicken house extension project, this research had access to interested farmers with chicken houses built to the same specifications, while fish ponds tended to vary significantly in capacity and quality. Finally, the on-farm feed limits and potential new feed pathways identified here for chicken production can be used to inform any future aquaculture extension work.
Understanding Risk-Averse Smallholder Farming
The rationality of the risk-averse approach adopted at the subsistence level provides helpful context to the results described in the following sections. The principle of risk aversion, or a safety-first mindset, is foundational to an understanding of how near-subsistence-level farmers approach agricultural production. In the face of risk and uncertainty, risk-averse farmers unable to absorb short-term losses will eschew surplus-maximizing choices, dodging even small risks in favor of safe low production, long-term strategies.[6]
In Chin State, the principle of risk aversion offers invaluable insight into village-level poultry and fish production. Chickens are especially susceptible to flu and predators, while fish ponds are vulnerable to landslides due to steep topography, heavy rains, and the weak structural formation of sandy cambisol soils. More resilient animals, like pigs, will often be perceived as the safer feed investment even though ideally chicken production is almost twice as efficient at converting feed into edible meat.[7]
In Hakha Township, both chicken production and aquaculture face basic feed availability challenges and production risks that require more than simple capacity upgrades. While much-needed knowledge and inputs are provided by development organizations, farming systems will tend to revert to previous levels of productivity following development projects if the sustainability of new input rates is not achieved.
Summary of Results
Results showed that farmers will fall short of meeting yearly nutritional needs for both energy and protein feed inputs to sustain a modest flock of fifteen to twenty chickens.[8]
When asked about feed regimes, most farmers expressed plans for combining market-purchased feed resources and farm-available resources. Survey results strongly suggest that farmers would greatly benefit from trainings about the nutritional requirements necessary for flocks to maintain a high production rate of chickens and eggs.
While many farmers had reliable local market access to energy-rich feeds like corn bran, all villages lacked the extended market pathways necessary for purchasing protein-rich feed components. Yet many farmers saw purchasing and transporting missing nutritional components from lowland markets as feasible and expressed strong interest in developing these pathways.
Many farmers hoped to fund purchases with the sale of birds. At current prices, it was estimated the funds earned from the sale of one chicken every two and a quarter months would be sufficient to cover purchase and transportation costs of dry fish feed to meet the protein needs for a fifteen-bird flock.
A majority of farmers also perceived increased chicken production first as a potential source of income, and second as a household food source. Local chickens are seen as a high-value commodity and the poorest respondents hoped to sell chickens to buy cheaper food.
Survey Results: Insufficient Feed Availability
Over half of farmers surveyed thought local feed sources would be generally sufficient to maintain chicken production once the ready-made feed provided by MIID was exhausted. Yet results indicated that farmers would fall severely short of meeting both the energy and protein needs of a fifteen to twenty bird flock with on-farm resources alone. On average, only thirty-one percent of energy needs and six percent of protein needs could be met by on-farm resources.[9]
Farmers therefore did not appreciate the severity of feed shortages or the low chicken growth rates that will result. In making up these feed deficits, much of the energy feed requirements can be source from inexpensive, low-grade feeds on local markets, such as corn bran. Of much greater concern is the ninety-four percent protein deficiency, as currently no low-cost protein-rich supplemental feed source is available.
With few exceptions, meat scraps were found to be the only protein-rich feed source identified by respondents. On average, less than one percent of chicken protein needs could be met with meat scraps. While many farmers confirmed their willingness to divert some meat scraps from pigs to chickens, this change will obviously not prove a significant boost to protein availability for future chicken production.
Finally, vitamin and mineral components make up about five percent of a healthy chicken flock—a small yet crucial part. Sources of vitamins and minerals are not difficult to find, and their absence in diets will be due to farmer knowledge or time constraints, rather than local availability. Vitamin and mineral dietary needs are best addressed in workshops and trainings.
Survey Results: Farmer-Identified Feed Plans and Preferences
A majority of farmers perceived increased chicken production first as a potential source of income and second as a household food source. Local varieties of chicken are preferred by locals to the imported birds from industrial scale poultry production. According to residents, Hakha has seen a significant rise in non-Chin birds for sale, as Hakha-based distributors increasingly import them from Mandalay. Local birds are considered much more delicious and sell for much higher prices than their imported counterparts. Some interviewees shared plans to purchase the less expensive, imported chickens while selling their local chickens at a premium. During this research, prices for imported chickens ranged from 6,000 to 12,000 kyat (about four to eight USD), while local chickens fetched 15,000 to 20,000 kyat (about nine to thirteen USD)
Most farmers identified a combination of market and local ingredients as their preferred feed strategy (see Table 1). Respondents opting to “purchase only” were often those not currently farming, for example local shop owners or elderly couples living on remittances. Farmers opting for “on-farm resources only” were generally those farming closest to subsistence level in remote locations.
Table 1: Farmer-Expressed Plans for Sourcing Feed for Poultry Production
| Feed Plans | Percentage of Farmers (%) |
| Combine farm and purchased ingredients | 67.35% |
| On-farm resources only | 14.29% |
| Purchase only | 18.37% |
| Did not have lowland market feed contacts | 97.50% |
| Transportation of feed to village will be a significant challenge | 43.90% |
Many farmers hoped to afford feed through the sale of chickens. To meet the protein needs of fifteen chickens for one year will require seventy-five kilograms of dry fish feed (sixty-five percent crude protein), at a cost of 73,123 kyat. At 15,000 kyat per chicken sale, a farmer would need to sell one chicken every two and a half months to cover the dry fish feed and transportation costs for a fifteen bird flock.
This is an encouraging result: it demonstrates that Chin farmers are able to support a sustainable feed strategy through the sale of chickens. However it also requires an integrated strategy that relies heavily on developing market pathways to lowland feed seller and conducting effective chicken diet and feed trainings.
Finally, in no village was the transportation of feed from lowland markets universally identified as an obstacle, and over half of the farmers surveyed indicated transportation was not a significant challenge. Many identified busses, friends, and their own vehicles as sufficient. If feeds were ordered from the lowlands and transported to Hakha by bus, fifty-six percent of farmers were confident they would be able to then get the bags from Hakha to their villages. This was less true for remote villages such as Phaizawng and Phaipa B. (As would be expected, village remoteness and transportation challenges shared a high correlation of 0.77.)
Market Pathway Research Results[10]
As of the summer of 2018, high-protein feed components are available only from relatively new lowland venders. New feed outlets in lowland market centers, such as Kalay, Gangaw, and Mandalay, offer a potential source of high-protein feed for farmers in Chin State if affordable market pathways can be established.
According to interviews conducted from May to July with farmers throughout Hakha Township, lack of knowledge about options for purchasing feed is a key barrier to adequate feed supply for fish and chicken production. Across all villages surveyed, eighty-six percent of respondents indicated they planned to purchase feed in the future, yet virtually no farmers knew how to buy feed ingredients from lowland feed suppliers. While some farmers expressed a wish to buy high-quality ready-made feed directly, most were more interested in purchasing the limiting feed components, such as protein-rich feed ingredients like dry fish meal, to mix with locally available feed resources.
Our team was therefore highly motivated to determine which feed sources were available at lowland market outlets and which had the highest protein per kyat ratio. In August, MIID’s team visited several feed sellers and local fish farmers in Kalay city (eight hours from Hakha). Sunflower seed cakes (a by-product of sunflower oil production) and dry fish meal proved the most cost-effective sources of protein on the market at that time.
Cost of Protein in Kalay
Table 2 below lists feed ingredients available in Kalay. As protein availability was the primary limiting factor for livestock farmers in Chin State, each feed was strictly considered in terms of protein (disregarding other nutritional elements) to determine the least expensive source of protein.
Table 2: Protein Cost Per Feed Ingredient
| Feed Ingredient | Cost of Protein (kyat/g) |
| Sunflower seed cake | 1.50 kyat |
| Fish paste | 2.30 kyat |
| Dry Fish meal | 1.50 kyat |
| Fish powder | 3.46 kyat |
| Sesame cakes | 2.14 kyat |
| Soybean powder | 2.04 kyat |
| Cow blood cakes | 0.84 kyat |
| Snail meal | 1.40 kyat |
| Formulated chicken feed (avg) | 3.6 kyat |
| Formulated pig feed (avg)* | 2.1 kyat |
| *Pig feed is sometimes used as a substitute for unavailable formulated fish feed. | |
Although blood meal and snail meal were found to have excellent gram-of-protein to kyat ratio, these options will be less feasible feed sources. Snail meal, while cheap, has a low protein percentage, making it bulky and less practical for transportation and feeding. Blood meal (made from blood collected during slaughter) is highly perishable, making it impractical for transport or storage.
Taking into account availability, transportability, and perishability, the most cost-effective protein sources were determined to be sunflower cakes and dry fish meal, costing approximately the same amount in terms of protein per kyat. As animal protein is easier to digest and generally preferred by chickens and fish, dry-fish is the better purchase when prices are questal. However, feed distributors in Kalay believed prices of sunflower seed cake were at their yearly highest when surveyed, making it likely that sunflower seed cakes will be the most affordable protein source from Kalay for much of the year.
While well-liked by chickens, sunflower seed cakes will tend to sink in fishponds, making it impossible for fish farmers to judge consumption. Dry fish meal was also the preferred feed for the large-scale fish production farmers visited in Kalay. For these reasons, dry fish meal is recommended as the best targeted protein purchase for aquaculture.
Transportation of Feed by Bus
As mentioned, many farmers often have their own preferred methods unique to their situations for transporting goods to their villages. In the absence of these, frequent busses also offer an accessible and widely available transportation option.
In the summer of 2017, feed could be transported by bus from Kalay to Hakha at a cost of 2000 kyat per basket or per twenty-five kilograms. Prices vary seasonally. Six companies run busses from Kalay to Hakha and buses run daily. According to the on-site attendant, the bus is not usually full and transporting bags of feed would not be a problem. While many villagers will likely have transportation options via their own social networks, busses can nevertheless provide reliable bus-station-to-bus-station transport options for feed from Kalay to Hakha.
Purchasers must arrange transport from the supply location to the bus station with feed suppliers. Some of the suppliers offered this service for free while others charged a small fee. For orders exceeding twenty baskets, the bus will pick the order up from the supplier at no cost.
According to the attendant, the bus driver will often accept payment for transportation on arrival for informal payment arrangements. For formal payments, Hakha has many money waiver shops that act as intermediaries for a small fee and the bus station also provides a formal payment service.
Feed Outlets and Contact Information
Farmers expressed a strong desire for improved market information and market pathways to relieve feed gaps. Possible lowland markets identified for feed purchases were Kalay, Gangaw, and Mandalay. Both Kalay and Mandalay were visited by MIID staff to gather relevant contact and feed information. A Kalay pamphlet was prepared with lists of phone numbers, information about suppliers, and information about protein content. Similar lists could be prepared for Gangaw and Mandalay. These lists are a crucial component for delivering necessary market information to Chin State farmers.
Overview of Recommendations
Education-oriented actions that target Chin farmer knowledge about feed and nutrition will be the low-hanging fruit in future extension efforts to improve fish and chicken production outcomes. Once farmers identify nutritional constraints, they will be able to make informed decisions about how to focus their time and resources on growing, purchasing, and gathering feed ingredients best suited to their own unique production systems.
Likewise, efforts to promote market pathways and local sourcing of feed are recommended but will be far less effective without this farmer knowledge base. Sourcing feed for chicken and fish can overlap with many other agricultural areas, such as home gardening, cattle slaughter, and pest control. Local sourcing of feed should proceed in terms of integrated farm models, as discussed below.
Although targeted to those villages studied in Hakha township, the recommendations presented beow based on these research findings could also offer helpful insights for determining sustainable feed prospects for other resource-limited upland poultry production and aquaculture. Similar projects should consider local resources for feed, farmer knowledge about both chicken and fish nutrition and feed, pathways to both local and extended markets, and ways to integrate feed pathways into the larger farm context.
Main Recommendations
Chicken Nutrition Workshops: Farmers will understand the nutritional requirements of a chicken flock in a closed chicken production system.
An understanding of chicken nutrition is crucial in maintaining a chicken house that will repopulate itself while reliably supplying eggs and meat for sale and household consumption. Most importantly, farmers must understand the direct relationships between protein-rich feed, chicken growth, and egg laying.
Our survey results indicated that Chin farmers tend to think about the needs of chicken-house flocks as they do about scavenging chicken flocks. Farmers maintaining chicken houses must have a detailed understanding of the differences between the nutritional needs of intensive house production in a closed system and those of scavenging chickens.
By the end of the workshop, farmers should be able to conceptualize an ideal growth-maximizing chicken diet. That is, they should be able to identify the nutritional requirements of chickens, the specific benefits of a proper diet, and the physical symptoms of nutritional deficiencies.
Feed Workshops: Farmers will be able to identify various sources of nutritious feed from the farm, local markets, and extended markets.
This workshop will enable farmers to take advantage of sources of feed from their own farms, local markets, and extended markets. Building on the Chicken Nutrition Workshop, farmers will learn the nutritional values of specific feed components and learn how to prepare feeds in proper proportions.
By the end of the workshop, farmers will identify which feed components in their chicken diets are lacking and estimate this quantity. They will be able to identify potential feeds on the farm and in markets. As part of the workshop, farmers should be given the relevant market information for their future reference.
Strengthening Market Pathways: MIID will help establish strong linkages with extended markets where desired. MIID will provide the crucial information needed for feed purchases and transport from outlets in Hakha, Kalay, Gangaw, and Mandalay market centers. Such information should include contact details for multiple feed outlets, nutritional content of feeds available, transportation options, and pricing.
Any similar project is recommended to offer financial assistance for initial orders, but should require farmers to place orders and arrange all transport themselves using the information provided. This will help establish the market pathways that can later be used by farmers as needed.
Considerations for Integrated Farming Models
Intensive chicken production should be fit into the larger farm and village context and linked with other extension efforts. Home garden extension work should grow potential sources of chicken feed, such as legumes. Securing feed from market sources will likely lend itself to collective purchasing or transportation efforts by farmers, and this possibility should be explored. Access to other crucial inputs, such as seeds and veterinary supplies, may be helped by integrating these feed networks into existing villager-coordinated supply networks.
For those fish farmers interested in poultry production, a documented integrated farming method involves building raised chicken houses over a fish pond. In this way, spilled feed and poultry droppings will fall into the pond where they are eaten by fish.[11]
An integrated approach should consider the use of vermiculture for turning farm waste into a potential source of fertilizer and chicken feed. Vermiculture is often used to turn waste material into fertilizer, yet it can also be used as a high protein chicken food source. For example, one method described by writers Harvey and Ellen Ussery is to release chickens into the home garden when applying the newly composted fertilizer.[12] Chickens will eat the worms before they disappear into the ground. In months in which fertilizer is not needed for gardens, the authors point out that vermiculture bins can nevertheless be maintained at full production to provide continuous feed.
Blood meal is a protein-rich feed made from the blood of slaughtered animals. In food insecure areas, uncollected blood amounts to a waste of a scarce nutrition component. To help make up protein deficiencies in feeds, blood can be collected, processed, and fed to animals. FAO’s 2004 technical guide on poultry production for small farms suggests absorbing blood on a vegetable carrier, such as corn bran, and drying the material in the sun.[13] Likewise, Feedipedia.org outlines how to process and combine collected blood with other farm products to create a complete feed.[14]
Feed from Insect and Grub Collection and Rearing: Insects-for-feed is a hot topic in rural development circles with the FAO proclaiming that “the search for alternative and sustainable proteins is an issue of major importance that needs viable solutions in the short term, making insects an increasingly attractive feed option.” Grasshoppers, crickets, cockroaches, termites, lice, stink bugs, cicadas, aphids, scale insects, psyllids, beetles, caterpillars, flies, fleas, bees, wasps and ants have all been used as complementary food sources for poultry.[15]
While in need of much research and experimentation in Chin State, the rearing and collecting of insects or grubs to feed livestock might offer an easy, inexpensive method for making up much of the missing protein in fish and chicken diets. Do-It-Yourself instructional manuals and videos for popular methods, such as the rearing of black soldier flies, abound on the internet, and any efforts to test the viability of such techniques in Chin State would be worthwhile.
A method used in Togo and Benin involves filling pots or baskets were with fibrous waste, dirt, and leaves. These are then turned over termite nests which grew upward into the pot. Once a month, these pots were spilled out for chickens.[16]Easily constructed pitfall traps can be made and placed in crop fields during times of high pest occurrence, and captured insects can simply be thrown to chickens every few days.
Black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) larvae offer one of the most widely discussed approaches to rearing insects for animal feed. Fast growth rates and easy-to-build growing chambers make them an ideal option.[17] Farmers interviewed confirmed that black soldier flies exist in Chin State.
In the villages of Cinkhua, Tiphul, and Bungzung, over seventy-nine percent of farmers responded positively when asked if they were interested in exploring ways to feed chickens with insects. Many farmers already practiced limited forms of insect or grub collection for feed, such as throwing worms to chickens or throwing termite nests into fish ponds. These low-cost, high-impact solutions have much unexplored potential.
Conclusion
While aquaculture and poultry production capacities have been greatly increased by recent extension efforts, the sustainability of these systems depends critically upon the availability of high-protein components of feed. Vitamin, energy, and mineral feed components are less limiting and are locally available—proper proportions of these in feeds largely depend on effective education, such as trainings and workshops.
Improving market linkages between lowland feed outlets and upland villages in Hakha Township will alleviate much of this deficiency for many villages and was identified as highly desirable by farmers. For most farmers, a functioning chicken house of twenty birds will be able to support the purchase of its own protein inputs with the sale of approximately one bird every two months. Workshops focused on the dietary needs of chicken and fish will be crucial in closing knowledge gaps to achieve the best feed practices possible in village contexts. Locally-produced blood meal, locally-collected insects, and locally-reared grubs offer great potential to increase protein levels in chicken and fish diets. These methods require further research and experimentation.
Finally, chicken production was hampered by a sixty-seven percent death rate of chicks due to what is believed to be multiple strains of chicken flu in the rainy season. Steps for both veterinary resources and upgraded chicken houses will improve outcomes and reduce farmer risk-perception. Chicken and fish production will be enhanced if integrated with other livestock production, home gardening, and input purchasing.
Acknowledgements
This report was a collaborative effort and would not have been possible without the data collection, research, input, and support of Joseph Lalbiak Thanga, Dawt Hlei Tial, Alexander Fenwick, Sui Tha Lang, Stephen Van Bik, Van Biak Thang, and Van Bawi Lian. Special thanks go to Van Bawi Lian, who headed survey delivery and collection on which this report is based. This research is part of a large scale three-year project implemented by Myanmar Institute for Integrated Development (MIID), in collaboration with Cornell University, entitled ‘Securing Positive Nutritional Outcomes through Agricultural Extension, Nutritional Education and Institution Building in Rural Chin State’. This research was funded through the The Livelihoods and Food Security Fund (LIFT).
References
- World Bank. “Myanmar: Ending Poverty and Boosting Shared Prosperity in a Time of Transition.” World Bank Group, 2014. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/871761468109465157 ↑
- LEARN Report. “Undernutrition in Myanmar,” Yangon: Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund (LIFT), 2016. https://www.lift-fund.org/sites/lift-fund.org/files/uploads/LEARN percent20Report percent20Part percent201.compressed.pdf. ↑
- FAO/WFP. “Special Report. FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security assessment Mission to Myanmar.” Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations World Food Programme, 2016. https://www.wfp.org/sites/default/files/2016KHM_0.pdf ↑
- LEARN Report (2016). ↑
- Degan, P. (2016). Assessment of Access to Fish and Current Capacities of Aquaculture in selected NOAC target villages. Myanmar Institute for Integrated Development. Yangon. ↑
- Henrich, J. and McElreath, R. “Are Peasants Risk‐Averse Decision Makers?” Current Anthropology, 2002. 43(1), pp.172-181. ↑
- Smil, Vaclav. “Eating Meat: Evolution, Patterns, and Consequences.” Population and Development Review, 2002. 28: 599-639. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2002.00599.x ↑
- Quantities and proportions of protein components (9g/day per bird) and energy components (34g/day per bird) of chicken feed are based on chicken nutritional information available at http://www.poultryhub.org/nutrition/nutrient-requirements/. ↑
- The majority of this less than six percent is actually from the small amounts of protein available in corn and rice. (For comparison, a chicken receiving a recommended full quarter a cup of corn a day will meet about fifteen percent of its daily protein need.) ↑
- Compiled from information collected July 24-26 in Kalay by Hakha-based MIID staff Dawt Hlei Tial, Van Bawi Lian, and Ryan Sherman. ↑
- FAO. “Integrated Agriculture-Aquaculture.” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations World Food Programme. 2001. http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/Y1187E/Y1187E00.HTM ↑
- Ussery, H. “The Modern Homestead Website.” Accessed Sept., 9, 2018. https://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/Boxwood+Vermicomposting.html ↑
- FAO. Small-Scale Poultry Production Technical Guide. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations World Food Programme. Rome. 2004. http://www.fao.org/tempref/docrep/fao/008/y5169e/y5169e00.pdf ↑
- Feedipedia. “Blood Meal.” https://www.feedipedia.org/node/221. 2016. Accessed Sept 9, 2018. ↑
- Huis V. A. et al., 2013 ↑
- Ibid. ↑
- Sustainable Feed for Aquaponics Blog. “Black Soldier Fly Larvae.” https://alternativefeedforaquaponic.wordpress.com/black-soldier-fly-larvae/ Accessed Sept 9, 2018. ↑
