Farmers’ willingness to pay (wtp) for local chicken ecotypes with enhanced newcastle disease resistance in Dodoma and Singida regions, Tanzania
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Date
2022
Authors
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Publisher
Sokoine University of Agriculture
Abstract
Indigenous poultry production plays an important role in meeting both social and
economic obligations for most households in developing countries, especially for poor
families. It is estimated that 2.5 million people keep indigenous chickens in Tanzania and
their demand is increasing now and then. However, despite local chickens being important
to most of the rural farmers and traders, still village kept chickens face challenges
including Newcastle Disease (ND) which is a threat to most of them. Although much has
been done to improve the genetics of indigenous poultry breeds with exotic resources
through cross-breeding to fight against ND the program has not been successful.
Therefore, the intentions of this study are: (i) to explore farmers’ awareness of Newcastle
disease in the study areas; (ii) to assess preferred indigenous chicken ecotype traits with
enhanced ND resistance by farmers’ and (iii) to determine factors influencing chicken
traits preferred by farmers. Methodologically, preference for indigenous poultry
enhanced ND resistance was elicited by using a choice experiment approach, applied
across 302 randomly selected farmers in two regions in Tanzania of Dodoma and Singida,
these study areas were selected due to their popularity in indigenous chicken keeping and
they are also affected by ND.
The primary data were collected in June and July 2022. Attribute prioritization for
indigenous poultry enhanced ND resistance was elicited by using a pairwise comparison
approach, applied across 173 farmers in two regions in Tanzania of Dodoma and Singida.
The results indicate that vaccine-related traits like the number of times that birds are
vaccinated and Newcastle disease resistance-related attributes such as enhanced ND
resistance were highly weighted by village farmers with an average score of 47.75 and
44.25 respectively Descriptive results indicate that 97% of sampled farmers were aware of ND and only 3%
were not. On the attribute preferences, most of the farmers were interested in chickens that
were more disease resistant when not vaccinated; chickens that produces many eggs per
clutch; had good mothering ability; hatching ability and good body weight. It can be
concluded that farmers prefer those attributes including resistance to ND especially due to
their free-range system of keeping chicken whereby chances of disease transmissions are
high. In addition, farmers were willing to pay more for chicken traits with enhanced ND
resistance without vaccination valued at TZS 86 732.2, good mothering ability fetch a
price welfare of TZS 20 052.1, chicken body weight TZS 12 774.1, hatching ability TZS
11 549.4. They were also less willing to pay for traits enhanced ND resistance with
vaccination, vaccination four times and twice a year and vaccine administration mode
though eye drop.
It is therefore recommended that all stakeholders participating in the indigenous chicken
value chain should adopt this mechanism as an alternative way to improve village poultry
productivity through targeting locally adaptable genetic resources that farmers value the
most. This approach could potentially provide improved chickens that are readily
acceptable by farmers and facilitates the conservation of locally adaptable chicken genetic
resources.
Description
Dissertation
Keywords
Preferences, Chicken breeds, Poultry diseases, Tanzania