Sustainable Poultry Farming in Cambodia

​

In 2019/20, the club secured a Rotary District Grant to financially back Cambodia village farmers to build a new shed on their Titled land to house five hundred one-day-old chickens, enabling them to grow to market-weight for sale.  

​

In Cambodia, training is provided by the KJC Training Centre, a Social Business supporting the training and mentoring of the grower on how to be a successful chicken farmer. The farmers are taught the necessary husbandry skills. 

​

The KJC Training Centre provides the day old chickens and feed on assignment to the farmer with the agreement that it will buy back the fully grown chickens at an agreed price. The birds are sold for meat chickens into Cambodia. 

​

The sustainable income-generating project ensures food security for the most deprived rural families. The World Bank has stated that in Cambodia, poverty throughout the rural communities has increased, with 46% of the population now living on an income of under $3 US per day. 

​

The project will enable the farmers to double their income thus helping them to improve their children's schooling by supplying their uniforms and education fees, and being able to purchase healthier nutritional food for the family to support their wellbeing. 

​

The shed was completed at the end of April 2020 and the support team had a hand over with the selected farmers for this project who were asked how they were feeling about the new chicken farm. Their response was in Khmer, translated to English here:

​

"We are most thankful that there are kind people in the world. A big thanks for the Rotary club for their kind donation and is most excited about getting a chance to make some extra money to help my family to live a better life and be successful, and teach others."

​

Update - April 2024

One of the farmers has been running his smallholder poultry business since February 2020 when Rotary provided the funds for him to start an outgrower farm. He is already on his 12th cycle of chicks and is seeing some success with an average survival rate across all batches of 75%. Since mature chickens are bought back from the farmer by KJC Farm at a fixed rate, the higher the survival rate to maturity, the higher the income to the farmer. 

​

Results from the most recent cycle of chickens:

Batch No: 12

# Chicks placed: 522

Survival rate: 54% (current investigating why)

Income from batch: AU$216

Average survival since start: 75%

Average income per batch: AU$290

Total income since start: $3,477

​

Rotary District and Rotary Club of Gawler Light contributions received: AU$2,112.