HPI'S SERVICE TO SMALL LIVESTOCK PRODUCERS THROUGH HOLISTIC DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS AT THE COMMUNITY LEVEL

摘要

China has a population of about 700 million involved in agriculture activities in rural areas, where, livestock takes about 50% of total agriculture output value. Rural poverty is still a serious problem for China. According to the World Bank's Standard for poverty, per capita income less than 1 US dollar, China still have 10% of rural population living in poverty. Most of those people are small livestock producers. Livestock contributes 50-70% of their cash income. Heifer Project International (HPI) is a non-governmental and non-profit international rural development organization. Over the past 60 years, HPI has been working hard to realize its goal of ending hunger and poverty, caring for the earth. HPI helps small farmers to make livestock an important part of sustainable and all-around development of agriculture and promotes project community construction and cooperation among farmers. HPI sent 550 dairy cows to China in 1946, but started to implement projects in China in 1985. Over the past 21 years, HPI China Office has implemented 65 projects in 14 provinces of China, with a total investment of over 10 million US Dollars. The program has distributed and passed on 4.37 million animals and directly assisted more than 50,000 farm households. Heifer's service to small livestock producers can be summarized into 9 points: 1) Facilitate the small farmers to fully participate and increase degree of rural group formation through community development; 2) Select poor communities/families, guide the development, and coordinate resources mobilization; 3) Develop project in a people-centered manner; 4) Use fine-quality livestock as main tools of anti-poverty, develop animal husbandry as a major way of anti-poverty, and pay attention to technical training and extension; 5) Passing on the gifts and sharing benefits; 6) Increase the efficiency of social mobilization and pay attention to reasonable use of human resource; 7) Focus on gender equity, family and enhance project partners and participant farmers' gender awareness and family responsibility; 8) Focus on and participate in ecology and environment conservation for sustainable development; 9) Demonstrate for government and other organizations.