After a year of implementation of Goatry based livelihood project, Yuva Mitra and stakeholders face number of challenges in the entire value chain. It was felt that each of the components of small livestock enterprise expertise is available at different places and not in reach of poor small livestock farmers. Technology, finance and investment, trade and market etc. are handling by different stakeholders which are not directly connected with each other.
To mitigate above issues, the idea of Goat Resource Centre (GRC) was conceived.
Objective of the Goat Resource Centre
Broader objective of GRC is to develop a one stop knowledge house for small livestock farmers, young entrepreneur, development organizations, and for large development programs to support in design and successful execution by providing services such as training and education of human resource, developing resource and training material, facilitating cooperation of various stakeholders to develop integrated value chain, by leveraging financial resources from various agencies and through policy advocacy.
Thematic area of Goat Resource Centre and their roles
The Goat Resource Centre aims to develop thematic expertise and create a knowledge bank for large level information sharing and dissemination. The thematic department will work in collaboration to build the capacity of implementation team and other stakeholders.
Technical Unit consists of veterinary and breeding services, fodder management etc. It prepares the advisory and training material for different stakeholders, provides timely veterinary services, convergence with resource institutions for breed improvement, developing various models of fodder development and its demonstration in villages.
Training & Capacity Building Unit is looking after training, research, documentation and publication of best practices and developing low cost model goat farm for different geographical areas etc. The unit will also be responsible for extension services through ground implementation.
Trade and Marketing Unit is be responsible for market research and facilitating the linkages on various aspect related to market. The unit will conduct the feasibility study for central fodder processing and sales for landless and poor farmers and explore a breed market for procurement of quality breed. The unit will be communicating with insurance companies, government and other stakeholder to create a customized insurance product for large scale implementation. The trade and market unit will explore avenues for institutional sales of producer organizations to exporter, processing units and to retails market.
Sustainability of Goat Resource Centre
The GRC planned to recover its operational cost after initial 4 years through various consultancy assignment, training and studies for government, corporates and developments institutions. The goat farm established for training center will sell the produce and value added product like milk, manure etc. and recover the operational cost. The resource center will provide the services to various producer organizations on chargeable basis for its sustainability.