There are problem with policies and animal husbandry practices that make animal husbandry not as popular as it should be.
Constraints/ problems of livestock and poultry farming in Nepal
Q. Explain the constraints of livestock farming, and mention the suggest measures of livestock farming in Nepal. (AFU board, 2074, 2071)
Although livestock sector has a vital role to play in the Nepalese agro-based economy, it has not been able to expand its activities because it has to depend upon the activities of other related agencies. Livestock sector as the sub-sector of agriculture has received less priority both in physical and financial facilities in the effort of development planning. Therefore, development planning of livestock sector is suffering, which have adversely affected the livestock development.
1. Economic condition of farmers:
Most of the Nepalese farmersS are small farmers. They have small size of land holding or they are poor or landless. They are unable to invest money on improved technology. So their low economic standard hinders the proper development of livestock farming.
2. Lack of basic data
The basic detail data of livestock and its mortality are essential for the smooth operation of livestock development program. But the basic data revealing the livestock population, fertility, and mortality and production capacity are not available because the systematic collection of statistical information in this field has not yet been developed.
3. Poor animal Husbandry Practices:
The livestock farming in Nepal is done in a traditional method. This has adversely affected the health and development of the livestock. This has a direct impact on the high mortality rate of the livestock, which has resulted in the poor development of livestock in the country.
4. Religion and food habit
In Nepal, Hinduism and Buddhism are the two main religions. Hindus refuse to keep swine. At the same time, since the food habit of the exotic animals is different from these of the indigenous ones, they are not fed to the level to express their production potential.
5. Lack of knowledge about breeding facilities:
The majority of the Nepalese people live in the rural areas and their literacy is 64%, because of lack of techniques, education, physiological barrier etc. Neither the farmers are trained to learn a scientific breeding technique nor the government has been able to supply sufficient breeding stock to the farmers.
6. High cost of feed/limitation of feed stuff:
Growing and finishing pigs are usually done with concentrates feed and a minimum of roughages. High cost of feed greatly affected the swine and poultry production in this country.
7. Lack of proper facility for disease and parasite control/High mortality.
It has been assumed that the livestock mortality rate is high because of lack of knowledge on proper care, lack of nutrition and proper veterinary services. Different species of livestock suffer from various types of diseases and parasites. Although government has established veterinary services in all districts, lack of farmer awareness and lack of adequate budget in this veterinary service center for timely supply of medicines and vaccines have resulted in inefficient mobilization of technicians to totally combat the
diseases and parasites of livestock.
8. Lack of marketing facility
The livestock raising farmer must be given better marketing facilities to give them better price for their livestock product, which will add to their incentive for livestock raising. Lack of better marketing for livestock and their products at reasonable price have naturally discouraged the livestock raising, farmers to raise more livestock.
9. Poor transportation facility
Transport system in Nepal has not been able to build a network link to reach the interior part of the country. The mountainous topography of the country has made the movement of the people and the livestock still much more difficult. This has caused a problem for providing necessary service to facilitate the livestock development programs.
10. Lack of co-ordination between different agencies
There are various governments, semi-government, hon-government and private agencies working in the field of livestock production and development but there is lack of or poor co-ordination in between them that affect to achieve the desire goals.
Measures to solve problems of livestock in Nepal
The quality of livestock can be improved by removing the factors responsible for their poor quality. Therefore, the following remedial measures can be adopted to improve the quality of animals.
- Proper utilization of native animal genetic resources.
- Control of diseases by timely vaccination and treatment of sick animals.
- Improvement in housing system.
- To strengthen the extension education programmes.
- To develop processing and marketing facilities.
- Provision of better feed and fodders.
- To grow quality fodder of improved varieties.
- To develop natural pasture land.
- To establish feed and fodder storage for lean period.
- To improve the quality of feed and fodder by supplementation with leguminous forages, urea treated straw, urea molasses block etc.
Policy changes needed
In order to achieve the desired growth in the livestock sector, the following policy changes are essential.
- Increase investment in all weather roads.
- Eliminate all subsidies for livestock processing and marketing in order to provide free entry for the private sectors. Thus public sector institutions would prioritize or remain as free standing units with no subsidy and raising all capital themselves.
- Remove government rules and regulations, which inhibit free markets and private activity (e.g. restriction on movement of livestock commodities across the district lines).