Commercial Poultry Enterprises in Kashmir Valley: A Value Chain Analysis

Abstract

Poultry sector in general has had progress; this can be identified by the presence of growing number of poultry farms for, which is with collective effort of government and entrepreneurs' in the valley. The sector has an enormous potential to provide sustainable livelihood to both rural and urban youth of the valley through employment and increased income, besides providing improved food supply. A limited amount of information was found while conducting a detailed analysis of the entire poultry supply chain, from an economic and strategic perspective, for the want of poultry development institute in the state of J&K that could work for Research and Development, Data collection and information bank for  poultry farmers.The study considers the Value chain framework to qualitatively assess poultry business for illustrating key and support activities, in order to conduct SWOT analysis of the sector and lists the gaps identified and potential interventions to be undertaken. Despite of the lucrative business opportunities the sector offers, the entire supply chain in this sector is under full control of exporters outside valley, as our entrepreneurs in this sector venture only into a small part of its entire value addition process i.e, rearing of day old chick to maturity and don't venture into other activities of higher order of the supply chain for the want of capital, technical know-how and the policy support, consequent upon such structural deficiencies our valley is yet to achieve sustainable and integrated commercial poultry development for import substitution to meet high domestic demand.